New York Times: After Lowering Goal, Army Falls Short on May Recruits
WASHINGTON, June 7 – Even after reducing its recruiting target for May, the Army missed it by about 25 percent, Army officials said on Tuesday. The shortfall would have been even bigger had the Army stuck to its original goal for the month.
But the news could have appeared worse. Early last month, the Army, with no public notice, lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050. Compared with the original target, the Army achieved only 62.6 percent of its goal for the month.
[T]wo senior Army officials acknowledged that the shift in May could leave the impression that the Army was playing “a shell game” with its recruiting figures, shifting its goals to make the numbers look better than they are.
The Pentagon has delayed until Friday the public release of May recruiting figures for all the armed services, a decision some military officials say is an effort to minimize what has become a drumbeat of bad news for the Army and the Marine Corps at the beginning of each month. Previously, each service, as well as the National Guard and the Reserve, released their monthly figures on different days at the start of each month, with each gaining some media attention.
The Army’s figures for May put the service about 8,300 soldiers behind its projected year-to-date number of enlistees sent to basic training by now. … The Army has tried to reverse the trend by adding 1,000 recruiters since last September, starting a new advertising campaign, offering selected enlistment bonuses of more than $20,000 and pairing returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with recruiters to attract soldiers.
One of the recruiters said he doubted that the summer would yield more recruits than the spring. “The summer is supposed to be big, but I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said. “I don’t see much interest among the high school seniors.”
Or especially much interest from their parents. Maybe that it’s that steadily growing number (1,684) of dead American soldiers with no end to car bombings or beginning to stable Iraqi democracy in sight. Maybe it’s that 28-month average of 60 soldiers dead per month.
Support the Troops? Great. Sign up or sign your kid up. Or here’s a potential solution: start sending recruiters to knock on the doors of those suburban homes with magnetic-yellow-ribbon-festooned SUV’s in the driveway.
