[kach22i]

It's sad what's happening to our country and to our military.

Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09awol.html?ei=5090&en=a93bb16660600854&ex=1333771200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, “there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger with an axe to prevent his deployment,” Dr. Grieger said in an interview.

.............“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,” said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting. “We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.” (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)

The officer said the Army National Guard last week authorized 34 states and Guam to enlist the lowest-ranking group of eligible recruits, those who scored between 16 and 30 on the armed services aptitude test. Federal law bars recruits who scored lower than 16 from enlisting.

Desertions, while a chronic problem for the Army, are nowhere near as common as they were at the height of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1971, for instance, about 5 percent of enlisted men deserted.

...........Such problems are costly. From October 2000 to February 2002, the Army improperly paid more than $6.6 million to 7,544 soldiers who had deserted or were otherwise absent, according to a July 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.