WP, pg1: Army Guard Refilling Its Ranks

[DeepModem Mom]

Army Guard Refilling Its Ranks
Members Get Bonus For New Recruits
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 12, 2006; Page A01


The Army National Guard, which has suffered a severe three-year recruiting slump, has begun to reel in soldiers in record numbers, aided in part by a new initiative that pays Guard members $2,000 for each person they enlist.

The Army Guard said Friday that it signed up more than 26,000 soldiers in the first five months of fiscal 2006, exceeding its target by 7 percent in its best performance in 13 years. At this pace, Guard leaders say they are confident they will reach their goal of boosting manpower from the current 336,000 to the congressionally authorized level of 350,000 by the end of the year.

"Will we make 350,000? The answer is: Absolutely," said Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau.

The rebound is striking because since 2003, the Army Guard has performed worse in annual recruiting than any other branch of the U.S. military. The Guard was shrinking while it was being asked to shoulder a big part of the burden in Iraq. Together with the Army Reserve, it supplied as many as 40 percent of the troops in Iraq while also dispatching tens of thousands of members to domestic disasters.

Today, the Guard is surpassing its goals and growing in strength -- a welcome boost for an all-volunteer Army stretched thin by unprecedented deployments. In recent months, the Guard enlisted nearly as many troops as the active-duty Army, even though it is a much smaller force. Indeed, the Army Guard, present in about 3,500 U.S. communities, will launch pilot programs this year to recruit for the entire Army....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031101342_pf.html

[bluestateguy]

1. How would you like your eggs with those cooked books?

Puleeze.

[IChing]

2. Winston must of been cooking those numbers again

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie.

Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions.
Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled.

In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all.

Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.

And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain. >>>snip chapter 4
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/4/

[tanyev]

8. Wow. I have got to re-read that book.

I think one problem is we assume that everyone sees it as an allegory of something we want to avoid. The Bush team is using it as a how-to manual.

[pocket]

3. hooray for a mercenary army

.

[tom_paine]

4. $2,000 for a friend's life of servitude to Bushevik Evil and perhaps death

What whores! (no disrespect to honest prostitutes)

[SquireJons]

5. What's with the Washington Post these days?

Often they seem to act as a wing of Rumsfelds office of disinformation. I no longer trust them at all. Every figure that the administration puts out is false and demonstratably so. In this article, the thrust was that they are exceeding their goals by 7%. well, is that 7% over the original recruiting goals of 3 years ago? Or is it simply better than the several times lowered standards. It's like a school lowering the standard grade for passing from 70 to 50 then to 30 and when they reach a number low enough that they can exceed, they celebrate. The article is a lie; the stregnth of the volunteer army is streched way beyond what is can stand, and every analysis I've read states so loud and clear. This is one of 3 planted stories I've detected in the last few days to try to divert public attention and lay a false foundation for the coming fall elections. The others are the story about strong employment numbers for February and the one about how happy and healthy and retired the baby boom generation is going to be. "happy days are here again, the sky is blue (I mean red) all over again." what a bunch of bull crap.

The cheney administration routinely makes up new job numbers, and have been doing it so long that no one even questions it any more. For 3 years now they've been counting tens of thousands of jobs each month that they say are 'home business' that havn't made it through the normal pipes yet. Right. Like I was employed for a couple of years dispite no income and having to drain my savings and investments just to live. They know I was employed because I wasn't on the official unemployment lists. (I didn't qualify)

And how the hell do they know what retirees in 10 to 30 years will be doing? Probably living off dog food in their bomb shelter, but hey, if Rove said it, it must be true.

[annabanana]

6. Who is Ann Scott Tyson

and how long has she been on the payroll? (of the Post, I mean... don't know about "other" resources).

This appears to have been torn wholesale from a press release. AND I wonder what outfit this is:

"The new "recruiting assistant" program accompanies a range of initiatives, such as a major increase in the official recruiting force from 2,700 to 5,100 since 2004. The Guard has also shifted from costly television ads to appeals that are more narrowly targeted at the young, such as pitches on pizza boxes and iTunes giveaways. In late January, it doubled to $20,000 its bonus for recruits who had never served in the military.
-snip-
The recruiting assistants are trained online by a private firm and have ushered in about 2,000 enlistees. "It made the difference between success and failure" in making the monthly recruiting goals, Jones said.

(emphasis mine) Has the old "shanghaied" method been resurrected?

[rooboy]

10. she's the literary equivalent of "this is Karen Ryan reporting".. n/t

[0007]

7. Are starting to sound like the Soviet Union during the cold war?

[cap]

9. then why are the deployments so long and recurring

if you are meeting quota, wouldnt there be fewer deployments?

[ECH1969]

11. Army National Guard recruiting is up

After a three-year drought in recruiting, the Army National Guard has started 2006 with its best new-member numbers in 13 years.

Officials say that's due in large part to a new program where current Guardsmen can make up to $2,000 if they recruit someone else.

The 26,000 soldiers signed up since the start of the 2006 fiscal year five months ago is 7 percent above the Guard's goal, The Washington Post reports.

And although the first part of the year is usually the most productive for recruiting, Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said he "absolutely" believes the Guard will reach its 350,000-member enlistment target.

http://www.dailyindia.com/show/7114.php/Army-National-Guard-recruiting-is-up

[valerief]

12. They're recruiting in India?

[redphish]

13. Outsourcing don'cha know.

[valerief]

15. I always figured they got those Halliburton contractors from our prisons

And some of the troops, too.

Guess that resource must be drying up.

[The Backlash Cometh]

22. Are they cutting the same deal they cut with Mexicans?

They and their immediate family receive citizenship?

[Malva Zebrina]

14. Ohh good--support the troops

eom

[MADem]

16. And here, my friends, is WHY

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0306/031006nj1.htm

For the past 14 weeks, quietly and with little public notice, the Pentagon has been steadily reducing the number of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq.

Last year, at the peak of deployments of reservists -- when citizen-soldiers were carrying perhaps 50 percent of the combat load -- the Army Guard alone had about 40,000 soldiers in Iraq. Today, its presence is down to roughly 20,000, said Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, director of the Army National Guard, and in 2006, "we're going to level out somewhere slightly less than that."


Army Guard and Reserve troops have made up about 80 percent of all reservists mobilized worldwide, but the overall number of reservists serving on active duty -- including Air Force, Navy, and Marine fighters -- has also dropped for 12 of the past 13 weeks, according to the Pentagon's weekly tallies. In fact, a look at the ups and downs of the past three years finds that the last time so few reservists were on active duty was in February 2003, during the buildup for the invasion of Iraq.


Meanwhile, despite much talk of drawdowns, the total force in Iraq, regulars and reservists combined, is still about the same as it was a year ago: 138,000. It surged to 160,000 for the October elections there and has only just come back down. So the citizen-soldiers of the Reserves and Guard are not coming home as part of some general withdrawal. The Pentagon is shifting the burden back onto the regular, active-duty force.

HERE's the pitch: Join the GUARD, friends, because the active duty forces are gonna take most of the shit!!!

Yeah, until the next time they are called up....poor suckers!

[lovuian]

18. Ya till next time!!! and it will be soon ...

its the economy too...

[Earth_First]

17. I do not believe it. Here's why:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2162091

We've heard for the past six months (much longer here at DU) that the military has had quite a military recruiting shortage, yet now all of a sudden we have become exclusively selective in who we decide to recruit, AND recruiting numbers are WAY up.

To me, this speaks volumes to the collective short/long term memory of the public who they feed this to. It seems to me, that the collective short/long term memory of demographic they target this information is about 3-6 months. They know it and we know it.

Of course this is just more "liberal intellectual elitism" :eyes:

[VegasWolf]

20. I agree, I have stopped believing the gov's numbers years ago. nt

[PSPS]

19. "Hurry, they're going fast!"

>7 percent above the Guard's goal...

They were missing their quotas so badly last year that they began lowering their quotas to cook the books.

Apparently, that have now lowered the "goal" to the point that it is under the actual level of enlistment.

[daleo]

21. It sounds like Amway

"Officials say that's due in large part to a new program where current Guardsmen can make up to $2,000 if they recruit someone else."

[OldLeftieLawyer]

23. I don't believe it

Liars.

They're all liars.

[depakid]

24. Like I ever believe anything the Post reports on this issue

Their credibility has long since been shot.