November Recruiting Stats: Spin vs. Reality

We've got some serious problems ahead in successfully achieving our national objectives. While the active-duty military did achieve their recruiting goals, The Pentagon is, frankly, lying about how they 'accomplished' their mission:

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the increase in recruiting was in part due to the services' focus on helping parents and teachers understand the value of military service.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the Army again accepted an undisclosed, double-digit percentage of recruits who scored between 16 and 30 on the ASVAB (maximum score 99), the lowest mental category currently limited to four percent of recruits [recently raised from two percent] for the entire fiscal year (ending 30SEP06). Well, the ASVAB is not that difficult, so one cannot help but wonder exactly how "helping parents and teachers understand the value of military service" results in a percentage of low-quality recruits so high that The Pentagon refuses to disclose what it actually is. Perhaps "understand the value of military service" means that parents and teachers actually thought that standards were higher than their current level.

This is not good for our country, especially since President Bush and the First Lady apparently still don't "understand the value of military service" for Jenna Bush and her Yellow Elephant boyfriend, Henry Hager. Does anyone want to bet that Lynndie England scored better?