And the NYT doesn't say a word about it.
Ready for a draft, kids.
"Army desertion rate up 80% since 2003; Strains of war, shortage of personnel cited" by Lolita C. Baldor/Associated Press November 17, 2007
If it is such a noble and good effort, why the leaving?
Or has the MSM and Bush been lying to us AGAIN!
WASHINGTON - Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.
Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel:
"We're asking a lot of soldiers these days. They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."
The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.
According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared with 3,301 last year.
The increase comes as the Army continues to bear the brunt of war demands with many soldiers serving repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders, including Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey Jr., have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are underway to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.
There is your DRAFT NEED, kiddos!
So you will have to serve before you get to go to college -- if they let you into college, that is!
Wallace: "We have been concentrating on this. The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers. The military is not for everybody, not everybody can be a soldier, and those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it."
You are not throwing them out, THEY ARE LEAVING YOU, dumbfuck shitter.
And DAMN STRAIGHT! DAMN STRAIGHT!
I will NEVER be part of your mass-murdering killer war machine!!!
While the Army does not have an up-to-date profile of deserters, more than 75 percent of them are soldiers in their first term of enlistment, and most are male.
Soldiers can sign on initially for two to six years. Wallace said he did not know whether deserters were more likely to be those who enlisted for a short or long tour.
At the same time, he said that even as desertions have increased, the Army has seen some success in keeping first-term soldiers in the service.
They just can't help themselves, can they? They just HAVE TO LIE, don't they?
According to Wallace, in the summer of 2005, more than 18 percent of the soldiers in their first six months of service left under one of those four provisions. In June 2007, that number had dropped to about 7 percent.
The decline, he said, is largely due to a drop in the number of soldiers who leave due to physical fitness or health reasons.
Army desertion rates have fluctuated since the Vietnam War, when they peaked at 5 percent. In the 1970s they hovered between 1 and 3 percent. Those rates plunged in the 1980s and early 1990s to between 2 and 3 out of every 1,000 soldiers.
Desertions began to creep up in the late 1990s into the turn of the century, when the United States conducted an air war in Kosovo and later sent peacekeeping troops there.
The numbers declined in 2003 and 2004, in the early years of the Iraq war, but then began to increase steadily. In contrast, the Navy has seen a steady decline in deserters since 2001, going from 3,665 that year to 1,129 in 2007.
The Marine Corps, meanwhile, has seen the number of deserters stay fairly stable over that timeframe, with about 1,000 deserters a year. During 2003 and 2004, the first two years of the Iraq war, the number of deserters fell to 877 and 744, respectively.
The Air Force can tout the fewest number of deserters, with no more than 56 bolting in each of the past five years. The low was in fiscal 2007, with just 16 deserters.
Despite the continued increase in Army desertions, however, an Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures earlier this year showed that the military does little to find those who leave, and rarely prosecutes the ones they find. Some are allowed to return to their units, while most are given less-than-honorable discharges.
I say you all put down the guns, and tell Bush and Cheney to FUCK OFF!!!!
And if they don't like it, turn the guns on them and ARREST THEM!
Wallace: "My personal opinion is the only way to stop desertions is to change the climate; . . . how they are living and doing what they need to do. Good officers and more attention from leaders could go a long way to stemming desertions."
BULLSHIT!
And even if it were true, we got Georgie, and he fucks everything up!
He don't give a shit about the cares of the soldiers.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be censoring war coverage and lying about the war.
The soldiers would have had all the equipment they needed, and they would have been taken care of upon returning.
But this asshole Anti-Christ has done none of that!
Unlike those in the Vietnam era, deserters from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars might not find Canada to be a haven. This week, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeals of two Army deserters who sought refugee status to avoid the war in Iraq."
Yeah, we know about Canada already.
Can't Run to Canada
Doesn't matter anyway. Sooner or later, the tyrant will lose.
They are always defeated, and this monster Bush will be, too!
Maybe not by the American people, but he will be by the world.
So you READY FOR A DRAFT for Der Fuhrer, kids?
Ready to serve history's greatest mass-murderer (remember, he ain't done yet, and the meter is ticking as I type this)!!??
