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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! March 12, 2006 The CallingBy GreyhawkJeremy Staat was a college roomate of Pat Tillman. Like Tillman he moved on to an NFL career, playing defense for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the St. Louis Rams. Like Tillman, he's decided to play defense for America: Staat said he was felt compelled to join the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but Tillman, who was his roommate at Arizona State, advised him to stay with professional football until he qualified for retirement benefits.PFC Jeremy Staat, USMC, graduated from the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Friday. 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.The Washington Post attributes the turn around to bonus money ($2,000) offered to members for recruiting others into the service. Enlistment figures for all branches for February: DOD: All Active-Duty Branches Exceeded February Recruiting GoalsOn the other end of some military careers, desertion rates continue to plummet, a trend that continues from 9/11. WASHINGTON, March 7 (UPI) -- Desertions from the all-volunteer U.S. military have dropped to half the number faced at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, a report said.More: Desertion numbers have dropped since 9/11. The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marines showed 1,603 deserters in 2001. That declined by 148 in 2005.Oddly, USA Today offers two versions of this story online - with two different headlines: "Fewer troops desert since 9/11" or... "8,000 desert during Iraq war" That second one may be designed to appeal to the "reality-based" community. But that's service - its all a matter of choice. Update: More here. Posted by Greyhawk / March 12, 2006 11:44 AM | Permalink 3 TrackBacksMudville Gazette reports on military recruiting and the fact that the numbers are fine. Interesting about Jeremy Staat as well, ooh-rah devildog! Read More Today's picnic basket of items from my blogroll. ... Read More Greyhawk tells us about Pat Tillman’s college roomate, Jeremy Staat, a professional footbal player himself, who recently joined the United States Marine Corps. He’s a Marine not for reasons you might think. Semper Fi PFC Staat. Sgt Hook out... Read More 15 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
I have heard that they have really had to lower their qualification standards to keep replacement levels up to need: accepting lower test & academic scores and higher criminal-offense (drug, etc.) issues.
Know anything about that?
Paul Harvey was saying that the academies are having high turn-down rates. Is that true? (It doesn't seem to me as important as the figures you give anyway, but when I heard that, I wondered if it was spin or truth.)
Ginny
I've seen reports that academy applications are down - but as these are among the most exclusive schools in the nation the vast majority of applicants will still be turned away.
Neal
A GAO report from last fall revealed that 58% of age-eligible youths couldn't meet military entry-level standards for health, education, aptitude, and other requirements - and were thus ineligible to serve. In other words, the majority of American youth were not qualified for military service.
An example - 6 minor traffic tickets disqualified a potential recruit for service in the Army.
Quote: "The total number of those ineligible was about 14 million, leaving only 10 million qualified. But of those, the report said 6 million go to college, leaving only 4 million potential recruits."
Thus followed the lowered standards. But that just scratches the surface of the issue. More details here.
Neal,
The Marine Corps has not reduced their qualification standards and they have exceded their goals (104%). The Corps was at 102% for FY2005. Retention rates are in the 115% if memory serves.
The Army supposedly doubled their CatIV recruit quota - from 2% to 4% if memory serves. If they are recruiting at 102% than they are not recruiting into the CatIVs. I am certain you want folks with GEDs that are not on the Deans List of a College or University to be able to join the military - don't you???
As noted above, the CatIVs don't include about 58% of our public schooled kiddies that can't read, write, multiply, run, do pull-ups, or a couple of push-ups. I think that is more an issue with the public school system when over half of their graduates can't meet basic mental and physical requirements for the military. Was it always this way - or did you vote for it since the 60's?
I'm glad to see the Rep. Murtha's active campaign against recruitment did not affect the numbers.
Boghie,
"I think that is more an issue with the public school system when over half of their graduates can't meet basic mental and physical requirements for the military. Was it always this way - or did you vote for it since the 60's?"
We voted for it since the 60's. Many honest educaters will say that you can have quality education, or equality education, but not both.
"Paul Harvey was saying that the academies are having high turn-down rates. Is that true?"
"I have heard that they have really had to lower their qualification standards to keep replacement levels up to need: accepting lower test & academic scores and higher criminal-offense (drug, etc.) issues."
Well, when the service academies have over 11,000 applicants for 2000 slots, I don't see how 200 or 300 fewer applicants returning their packages could have any effect on the caliber or number of officers out the back end of the school.
And I am unaware of any reduction in qualification standards for recruits whatsoever. The qualification standards today are pretty much what they were 5 or 10 years ago.
Just because more young Men and Women have recognized that someone has to actually serve and fight to protect our lives I don't see how anyone can paint that as they are being duped or maybe they aren't the creme de la creme (excuse my French) of our society. Perhaps the only standards that have changed are the standards which say youngsters who enlist to defend America are worthy of our respect and our admiration for their service.
One of the finest sailors I ever served with, and a Man who taught me much about standing watch and running nuclear reactors was only in the Navy because the judge told him, "4 years in the service or 20 years for grand theft auto, which'll it be, boy." Thank God he chose the service. It made a Man of him, a nuke out of me, and a better person out of most who came near him. He told us how joining the Navy had saved him from a life of crime and prison, and made him much happier today than he ever thought he would have been.
These are good statistics. There is no reasonable way to make this a bad story. Those who try are looking to hurt America or find fault where none exists. I guess that gives "reality-based" a whole new meaning to me. Sorry if that offends you. Get over it.
Subsunk
"maybe they aren't the creme de la creme (excuse my French) of our society."
Subsunk, I beg to differ. Virtually everyone in uniform not in the brig is a far better citizen than almost all of their contemporaries on the campuses of Harvard, Yale, or any school of your choice. They are indeed the creme de la creme, and we are damned lucky to have them, even though most of us don't deserve them or their service, regardless of how they come to serve.
Going back to the issue of standards:
This is probably what I read some time ago that gave me a different impression:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1232092/posts
It's a NYT article from 10/1/04: "Its Recruitment Goals Pressing, the Army Will Ease Some Standards."
Is it incorrect, or are we talking about different interpretations?
Too bad it took so little time for "wilsonkolb" to prove my point.
nealjking, the NYT is about as accurate as Wikipedia (or even less), so you might want to look for better sources. I don't have time to look now or I would give you some links myself, but just about every policy and recent set of statistics on the military can be found on the internet. It's much more productive to read the original policies and data than to read what some reporter at the NYT says about something
Tim, I'm not interested in wilsonkolb's rant. I'm just trying to find out the relationship between these two views: the one as presented by the NYT article in 10/04, the other as reported by others on this comment log. How do you reconcile these reported facts? The one seems to say that recruitments are up, without any reduction in standards; the other that higher percentages of less-qualified people were accepted than ordinarily would have been allowed.
nealjking, I'm not sure reconciliation is necessary (or possible - it could be both are essentially accurate, although I don't know - I'd bet politics distorts reported "facts" in this case). The lowest category of eligibles is also the smallest - doubling from 2 to 4 percent for the Army is probably still significantly lower than the Army's average basic training failure rate (and smaller than two standard deviations away from mean in a standard distribution bell curve) per induction class. Additionally, it seems reasonable to include in this analysis the effect of the Army getting bigger - it should be obvious the Army has decided because it is getting bigger, it needs to accept the best applicants from those they previously turned away - kind of like colleges implementing affirmative action programs once they decided to "diversify" their student bodies. So even if the Army is lowering its standards, it seems inconsequential to the bigger picture, since, unlike colleges and businesses, no one gets a job or promotion they've not earned.
Regardless, the number that most impresses me isn't the Army meeting its enlistment rates for either the Active or Guard, but rather it far surpassing its re-enlistment goal, especially evident amongst our troops in the sandbox. Despite the media distortions, the guys charged with executing the policies seem quite satisfied, overall.
I blogged on the misleading headline in the USA Today article, but didn't know there was a second one floating around. That's rather curious.
Patriots like Staat are very inspiring.
Yes because wilsonkolb has experience in firefights. Did not realize you served bro. That's cool. Let me paint a very realistic scenario for you. Huge firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Bullets flying everywhere, Tillman is shot and killed. At first people attribute it to the Taliban, but once the body is back in the rear and people start taking a closer look, the true story comes out.
Is it possible any of the above could happen Wilson? Or are you just talking out of your butt.