Way tobreak the army, Chimpy!
The percent of Army recruits with a high school diploma dropped last year, continuing a trend that has worsened since the start of the Iraq war, according to a report released Tuesday.
National Priorities Project, a research group that analyzes federal data, found that nearly 71 percent of Army recruits graduated from high school in the 2007 budget year. It based its findings on data it obtained from the Defense Department through a Freedom of Information Act request.
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The Army’s goal is 90 percent high school graduates, which it hasn’t met since 2004. Each year since, the number of recruits with at least a high school diploma has steadily declined.
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Strained, in part, by military operations in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the military has had to increase the number of waivers and raise enlistment bonuses to fill its ranks.
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The National Priorities Project said the percent of “high-quality” recruits — those with a high school diploma who scored in the top half on the military’s qualification test — declined from budget years 2004 to 2007. In that period, the number of high-quality recruits fell from about 61 percent to nearly 45 percent, the group said.
It also found that in the 2007 budget year, upper middle- and high-income neighborhoods were underrepresented by an even larger margin than three years earlier.
who with two brain cells to rub together would join the Army or Marines now? it follows you’ll have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
god forbid there be a draft.
Well, considering odds are good you’re brain damaged coming out, you might as well be brain damaged going in.
A high school diploma and a top-50% score makes you a “high-quality candidate” in the US? I think in Canada you need a post-secondary certification of some sort (college or university) and top 20% scores on the equivalent tests. On the other hand, a “high-quality candidate” military job here pays comparably to its civilian equivalent in many cases — an unfriend of mine who joined up has a community college certificate in VB programming and is making $50K/a (plus signing and stay-on bonuses) in SIGOPS, not getting his obnoxious rear shot off in Afghanistan.
Here’s a question — if you guys can’t be bothered to pay your armed forces enough so they don’t have to be on welfare too, what thehell are you spending all that Pentagon budget money on?! Can’t all be ordinance; must be graft…
RAN- I’ll tell you who would join the Army or Marines right now- those proud of the free and safe country that they live in. I am an ROTC cadet and I am proud to be going to college and training to be an Army Officer at the same time. We need to support our soldiers instead of berating them because no matter your opinions on the war, it is the soldiers who do the noble deed and it is the soldiers who keep us safe at night. HOOAH!
Unidentified ROTC:
Good luck as your beloved GOP government will fuck you over from here to Sunday.
Unidentified, nobody is dissing the soldiers; the complaint is about the dilution of the military’s personnel during Dumbya’s reign. And while I do not doubt the patriotism of those enlisting in our armed forces, I do feel that the nation’s crappy economy and rising unemployment, which coincidentally occurred during Dumbya’s reign, has forced many people to consider to consider the military option.
“who do the noble deed”
what noble deed would that be?
taking part in an illegal war of aggression in Iraq started on a pack of lies: http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=14555 in order to set up permanent bases and steal their oil? how fucking noble.
destroying third world countries that were never any threat to us in no way keeps me or anyone else safe.
educate yourself on how pathetically you’ll be treated if god forbid you go over there and become gravely injured. troops are “fungible” per Dumbsfeld and you’ll be used and discarded like yesterday’s trash. count on it.