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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (122547)	12/30/2003 10:20:15 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

November 07, 2003 SOMEBODY WROTE THAT RE-ENLISTMENT RATES were a good metric for how things are going in Iraq. If so, this is good news: HEIDELBERG, Germany — If Army officials were worried that constant deployments would drive too many soldiers out of uniform, they can rest easy. As the Army closed out fiscal 2003 at the end of September, so many soldiers had raised their right hands to re-enlist that the service met its retention goals and then some, retaining 106 percent of the soldiers it hoped to keep. “We needed 51,000 soldiers to re-enlist, and we got 54,151,” said Sgt. Maj. James Vales, a senior retention manager at Army headquarters in Washington. I don't know how much to make of this, especially as the story indicates that there are quite a few other factors involved, but it's certainly a positive development. UPDATE: Reader Dustin Appel emails: Further to your post on re-enlistment rates, I wanted to make you aware of something I haven't seen reported in the media anywhere: US Army recruiters have told me that all of their slots for Officer Candidate School for FY 04 and 05 are filled, and that they have been overwhelmed with applications. Obviously the Iraq occupation hasn't affected the number of college grads considering entering the military either. I haven't seen anything about this. Anybody got any links? Posted by Glenn Reynolds at November 07, 2003 08:11 AM instapundit.com

To: Win Smith who wrote (122547)	12/30/2003 10:21:49 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

For what it's worth, from Strategy Page: strategypage.com "Despite the large number of reservists and National Guard troops mobilized for Afghanistan and Iraq, troops are staying in uniform. The Army National Guard, which has had the largest proportion of troops called up, has so far only lost ten percent of troops to attrition (not re-enlisting) among units returning from overseas. The normal rate of attrition, for all National Guard units, is 17 percent. What is probably keeping the re-enlistment rate up is efforts by the army to get reservists off active duty, and making plans to limit the active duty time in the future. Last week, for example, the number of reservists on active duty fell another 1,289, to 157,605. But that number is going up in the next few months, as units are called up for training, and movement to Iraq to replace reservists coming home. Meanwhile, the number of new recruits for the active army, and the army reserve and National Guard, continue match needs. For the fourth year in a row, the army met its annual goal for new recruits. In the past year, 74,132 men and women enlisted (against a goal of 73,800.) The army reserve for 27,365 (against a goal of 26,400.)" Posted by Casey Tompkins at November 9, 2003 01:01 AM deanesmay.com