[NYTr] Army Suckered In More Cannon Fodder in July

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by rick kissell

The Washington Post - Aug 11, 2007


Army Recruiting Rebounds in July To Exceed Goals

War Czar Says Draft Still an Option

By Josh White

The U.S. Army announced yesterday that it exceeded its July goal for 
active-duty recruiting after two months of falling short, the same day 
the White House war czar said in a radio interview that he believes it 
makes sense militarily to consider a draft as an option for relieving 
war-related stresses on U.S. forces.

Though Bush administration officials and U.S. military leaders have
long shunned the notion of reinstating a draft, Lt. Gen. Douglas E.
Lute, Bush's top military adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
said yesterday that the draft has "always been an option on the table"
and that it "makes sense to certainly consider it."

In an interview on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered,"
Lute said the military is competing for a "very narrow slice" of high
school graduates and that the draft is one of several options to
prevent the military from breaking.

"Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us 
exceptionally well," Lute said. "It would be a major policy shift, not 
actually a military but a political policy shift, to move to some other 
course."

National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Lute's
comments were consistent with President Bush's stated policy in regard
to any potential use of the draft. "The president believes an
all-volunteer military serves the country well, and there is no
discussion of returning to a draft," Johndroe said.

The comments followed a U.S. Army announcement that it had surpassed
its recruiting target for July by about 2 percent, pulling nearly
10,000 new soldiers into the service last month despite what Army
officials describe as one of the most difficult recruiting environments
in history.

The successful month came after the Army missed its goals for both May 
and June by a combined total of more than 1,750, a downturn that 
appeared to threaten the Army's effort to recruit 80,000 new soldiers 
this year. But the July turnaround, which the Army announced yesterday, 
is an indication that its new recruiting initiatives could help the 
service meet high summer goals before the end of the fiscal year.

Army officials announced that recruiters successfully brought in 9,973 
new recruits in July -- 223 more than the month's goal of 9,750, the 
highest monthly goal of the year. The Army is now about 1,000 recruits 
above its year-to-date goal but still hopes to recruit another 18,136
by October.

"The year-end goal is our focus," said Maj. Anne Edgecomb, an Army 
spokeswoman at the Pentagon. "These are the three largest months we 
recruit, and they are tough months. We have tough goals ahead, but
we've put in place what we believe will help achieve these goals."

The American public's growing disapproval for the war in Iraq has 
complicated the Army's efforts to attract new soldiers who know they 
probably will be deployed quickly to an overseas war zone. As the Bush 
administration's war strategy has pushed more than 162,000 troops into 
Iraq amid possible 15-month tours, officials say it is increasingly 
difficult to sell the service to young volunteers and the parents, 
coaches and teachers that influence their lives.

New to the Army recruiters' tool kit is a "quick-ship" cash bonus of 
$20,000 that goes to recruits who are willing to go to basic training
by the end of September. Army officials said the bonuses began July 25
and that it is too early to know their influence, but they hope they
will push some recruits to enter the Army sooner than they had planned, 
boosting numbers for the end of the year.

Other bonuses have been raised, including a maximum $20,000 cash bonus 
to recruits who want to sign up for a two-year enlistment, a bonus that 
has been raised twice this year, from an original bonus of $6,000
before May.

Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army's Recruiting Command, said 
yesterday that the Army is also pushing more recruiters into the field 
to augment the 8,300 currently working full time. Army officials have 
asked former recruiters now in different roles to take temporary 
assignments in their old jobs and are offering them $2,000 bonuses for 
each soldier they enlist.

The Army also is asking nearly 5,000 newly trained soldiers to return
to their communities to talk up their first months in the service and 
dispel myths about basic training, and is offering them cash bonuses if 
they succeed in bringing in new recruits.

"We want them to go and talk amongst their friends about how the 
training went," Smith said. "That way we're getting a motivated, fresh, 
young soldier out there talking up the Army."

Before May, the Army had met its monthly goals going back almost two 
years, and it exceeded its goal of 80,000 recruits for the 2006 fiscal 
year by 635 soldiers. Pentagon officials announced yesterday that the 
other military services' active-duty recruiting also met or exceeded 
goals for the month of July.

[Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.]