Recruiters Under Fire

In the last 2 days we've seen a lot of stuff about recruiting mostly focusing on the Army. Some of what is being put out by the media and lefty blogs is a lot of half truths, misleading information, and false information and I just can't not talk about it.

First up on the docket is Military Accepting More Ex-Cons:

Here's the cold hard facts: Did the Army grant more waivers in FY 2006 than it did in FY 2003? Yes, they did.

Some may argue that this is due to an increase in the missions from 2003 to 2006, but the increase in mission cannot account for the increase in waivers as the difference is only about 10,000 soldiers. It's just a simple fact that they granted more waivers than they did in the past.

Where I get confused is where they start to only mention moral waivers without even mentioning what kind of moral waivers they're talking about. Anybody who has been involved in recruiting for more than an hour would understand that there are many kinds of moral waivers. Lets say that you have a prior service guy who got a little overweight while on Active Duty and was kicked out of the Army because of it. After a while he gets in shape, loses the weight, and wants to enlist. Since his DD214 has a RE-3 he requires.... you guessed it a MORAL WAIVER. If you have a kid who has a tattoo on his hand, during FY 2006 he would have required a MORAL WAIVER. Lets say you have a kid who admits to smoking pot on more than one occasion, or "recreational use", he's going to require a MORAL WAIVER. Surely these hardened criminals should not be in this kinder-gentler Army right?

I also have a problem with what some of the people quoted in the article are saying:

"The fact that the military has allowed more than 100,000 people with such troubled pasts to join its ranks over the past three years illustrates the problem we're having meeting our military needs in this time of war," said Aaron Belkin, director of the center.

100,000?! HOLY CRAP!

How exactly did he get these numbers I wonder? From earlier in the story:

The number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year. Other misdemeanors - from petty theft or writing a bad check to some assaults - jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006, representing more than three-quarters of moral waivers granted by the Army.

Lets do math!

Lets say that there has been a steady increase in waivers each year starting in 2003 (I'm too lazy to look up the exact numbers but an estimation should do fine for our little fact finding mission). So for felony waivers we had 411 in 2003, 520 in 2004, 745, in 2005 and 901 in 2006. So in the last 4 years we've had 2,577 people enlist with a felony on their record.

For misdemeanor waivers we had 2700 in 2003, 3600 in 2004, 4900 in 2005 and 6000 in 2006. So that means in the last 4 years we've had 17,200 people enlist with a misdemeanor on their record.

If you add those numbers up, you've got 19,777 people who required moral waivers for law violations who've enlisted in the last 4 years. Lets just round my random numbers up to 20,000 to make things easier.

Where in the WORLD did Aaron Belkin from the California-based Michael D. Palm Center come up with 100,000?! Sorry, but when you put out a number that is 5 TIMES HIGHER than the actual (estimated) numbers that is not an "error in reporting", that is an OUTRIGHT LIE!

Noticed how he said it's 100,000 people with "such troubled pasts"? The story even admits that you need a waiver for writing a bad check - surely these are very troubled people. What if the person has a lead foot and requires a waiver for 4 or more speeding tickets - again, we should let people with "such troubled pasts" into our military......

What's worse is that the lefty bloggers are having a field day with this.

One blogger had this to say:

The waiver removes the standard measure of "morality" for people who have been convicted of such crimes as aggravated assault (including rape), burglary, robbery, and vehicular homicide.

Including rape? Wow, that's news to me - I was unaware that rape was a waivable offense.

Let me just look that one up in the ECM...... wow, says here that rape is a non-waivable felony.....

Aggravated assault? That one is a little tougher since the military classifies things differently. But let me look that one up too..... wow, here's the definition:

Assault, Aggravated (such as assault with dangerous weapon,
assault intentionally inflicting great bodily harm, or assault with
intent to commit a felony)

And you guessed it, non-waivable.

I'll give him burglary, as that is a felony waivor.

What about robbery? If it was armed robbery than that's non-waivable, but robbery without a weapon is waivable.

What's more interesting is he had this to say:

This policy was instituted gradually beginning around 2003, because the
recruiters' source pool, inner city youth and hapless rural youth,... wisely
withheld their hands from the contracts. And they were the ones without the
records.

Instituted gradually beginning in 2003? That's strange, when my brother was a recruiter in 1999 I remember helping him with some waivers when I worked ADSW. Maybe my brother was ahead of the curve, knowing we'd be stuck in this "quagmire."

Frankly, these bloggers need to stop lying about things they know nothing about. The scary thing is that every one of their ilk that reads this filth is going to believe it as the gospel.

You know what I find most hypocritical about this who thing? The left's talking points.

The left is the first group of people to talk about rehabilitation of our criminals and giving them a second chance - yet when the military does what they want and they're up in arms about it!Robbie at UrbanGrounds said it much better than I can.

That's all I'm going to write tonite - watch this weekend for the next thing on my docket - Undercover reporters catching recruiters lying.