Is the Army fixing recruitment goal numbers to justify SURGE in Afghanistan?

Posted by indythinker

Amid charges from former Vice-President Dick Cheney and other Republicans that the Obama administration is taking too long to make a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan, Correspondent Fred Kaplan of Slate says that the Army's claims to have exceeded its 2009 recruiting goals have been exaggerated. The numbers are very fishy, and it is what the Pentagon IS NOT telling the American people, Congress, and their Commander-In-Chief that is highly irregular.

Some Pentagon officials claim success was due to high unemployment, while others to a spurt in civic-mindedness in response to President Obama's call for national service. However, scrutiny shows that fewer people joined the Army this year than last year and the Army lowered its recruitment goals.

At a time when the administration is faced with dwindling public support for the 8-year-old war, Obama's national security team is weighing whether the United States should send more troops to the region. His team is considering as few as 10,000 and as many as 80,000 more Americans in the region, as well as whether to order more forces to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan or to focus more narrowly on al-Qaida terrorists believed to be hiding in Pakistan. The U.S. already has about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, and NATO nations have supplied 36,000 more.

Kaplan's investigative report is timely and raises many questions about the Pentagon's anxiety to send more troops to Afghanistan. Even if troops were not being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan the shifting of military recruitment numbers to make a case for escalation of war warrants a Congressional and administration investigation to prove Kaplan mistaken. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr need to explain to their Commander-In-Chief, Congress, and the American people why Army planners saw fit to decrease military recruitment quotas for the first time in a decade while simultaneously begging for MORE TROOPS IN COMBAT.

He notes that the Army is the service that has been having the hardest time finding new recruits in recent years, because it [along with the Marine Corps] has borne the heaviest burden, and suffered by far the most casualties-in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The Pentagon's report states that the Army's goal for 2009 was to sign 65,000 new recruits. It actually signed 70,045. But the claim is not as credible as it appears on paper. Bean counters at DoD may consider this number crunching an technical increase and meeting recruitment goals, but lowering that goal by 15,000 recruits does nothing for the credibility of the Army's claim that it has met or exceeded recruiting goals. In fact, regardless if one supports the proposed surge by the Pentagon or not the time to cut military recruitment quota in our ground forces is not when Army generals are asking for more troops in the field.

What the Pentagon fails to mention to both Congress, the President, and the American public is that in each of the previous two years of the Bush administration, the Army's recruitment goal was 80,000-much higher than this year's. The Pentagon traditionally does planning in five year cycles, and during wartime it is essential to have an accurate assessment of how many troops you need in the pipeline before asking for additional troops in a combat zone. This is even more essential given we do not have a National draft.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/article9088.html