This is from Friday's USA Today and I could not believe it. How can they say the person will only be on active duty for 15 months when stop-loss is the rule? It seems like blatant deception. They can spend the rest of the time in the Reserves. We all know where much of our Reservists are now. This article also says they can spend the rest of their time in the Peace Corp. Hmmm. Don't believe it.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-13-army-short-tour_x.htm
The military establishment is not living up to their end of the contracts and everyone knows it. The soldiers are expected to live up to their end of course and the courts are not backing the soldiers up. If they would end stop-loss and the overextention of the Reserves perhaps some would not be as reluctant to join, even if it meant they would be put in harm's way. But who wants to be used and lied to?
"Army offers 15-month hitch
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- The Army, faced with a severe and growing shortage of recruits, began offering 15-month active-duty enlistments nationwide Thursday, the shortest tours ever.
The typical enlistment lasts three or four years; the previous shortest enlistment was two years.
Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the head of the Army Recruiting Command, said 2006 could be even worse than this year, a continuation of "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer Army."
Recruits in the new 15-month program could serve in 59 of the more than 150 jobs in the Army, including the combat infantry, and then serve two years in the Reserve or National Guard.
They would finish their eight-year military obligation in the Guard or Reserve, volunteer programs such as AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps, or the Individual Ready Reserve, a pool of former active-duty troops who can still be called to duty but aren't affiliated with any military unit.
David Segal, a military personnel expert at the University of Maryland, said the 15-month enlistments are no panacea. Fifteen months, Segal said, is often not enough time to learn complex tasks in a high-tech Army.
Jim Martin, a retired Army officer who teaches military culture at Bryn Mawr College, said parents and teachers "see the Army as a real risk, a real danger" because of the war in Iraq. That, more than the length of service, is the major obstacle to recruiting.
Rochelle projected the service will have only half the number of recruits ready for 2006 than it did this year, when it had an unusually low number of recruits signed up in advance. Under the Army's delayed entry program, recruits can sign up one year and report for service a year later.
In 2006, the Army's stockpile of recruits is projected to drop from 18%, or 14,400 soldiers, of the recruiting target of 80,000 to just under 10%, or slightly less than 8,000, Rochelle said."
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