Army Works To Increase Enlistees

[Scooter24]

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_army_080504,00.html
(From USA Today)

WASHINGTON - The Army is dramatically increasing cash bonuses for enlistees and preparing to put hundreds of new recruiters on the streets in anticipation that it will have an increasingly tough time finding recruits in coming months.

The Army is expected to meet its goal of 77,000 new active-duty recruits for the 2004 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. But Army officials are far less certain about next year, when the service will have to persuade 80,000 young adults to sign up in the midst of a prolonged guerrilla war in Iraq and an improving economy at home.

Army planners are still debating how many new recruiters to add, but they intend to send at least 300 more to recruiting offices across the USA to bolster the Army's force of about 6,000 active and reserve recruiters, says Doug Smith, a spokesman at Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky.

To lure new prospects, the cash bonuses in some hard-to-fill specialties will rise to a maximum of $15,000, more than double the previous top bonus of $6,000 for a three-year enlistment. The top bonus for most recruits will rise to $10,000.
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Every time I read stories like this I get nervous.

-Scott-
A nervous 24 year-old

[HawkerHurricane]

1. butbutbut...

the Army is Meeting it's quotas! That's what the reichwingers are telling me!

Of course, they are meeting quotas by changing the quotas to match recruitment, but hey, a hit's a hit, right?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. "Patriotism"....for a price.

Get out the flags and the check books. Have fun! Burn down villages! Torture helpless people! Wear cool clothes! Shoot off guns! Get to kill real people! And, we'll give you money to do it!!

Support out troops..send money.

[sweetheart]

3. The army should be a hit these days with the torture thing

Think of all those masochistic republicans in the underworld and
how the chance to be all you can be, is very appealing, expecially
if it is abusing muslims.

I'm sure the republicans are flocking to the torture services in
droves... What a bunch of incompetents endangering america's strategic
interests.... woof! the army is a waste of money.

If we had not spent a dime on the military, we'd be safer for it.
What irony to "pay" to be made more "unsafe" and to kill our own
children and those of other people, to further undermine global
security. The best we can do is to fill the ranks with republicans,
so they can die for their stupidity and free up a chair.