Tough Boots to Fill, Army recruiters take orders to boost the ranks...LAT

The number seems to hang above their heads like the banners on the walls. It's a big number, and they grimace when it's mentioned, because it's more than a number. It's an order. By the end of the month, the seven soldiers who staff this U.S. Army recruiting station must put 14 new men or women in boots.

"This job will kill you," one recruiter says under his breath. "This is the most stressful job I have ever had."
........
When the Army recently announced its goal of adding 80,000 soldiers this year to a force of 1 million, that goal fell squarely on the shoulders of recruiters. Then, by some mysterious math practiced deep inside the Pentagon, the goal was divided among more than 1,685 recruiting stations worldwide, spread over the calendar year, and thus gave rise to October's number in Westminster — 14.
That's roughly one-third of a platoon.
By the end of the month.
Which actually means by the end of today...
...........
He doesn't tell them what it was like to have his tank hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and then to have the tank tumble into the Euphrates River. He doesn't tell them about the shrapnel in both his legs, or the 38 friends he lost in battle — including one who committed suicide, a man whose memory makes Hill's eyes well with tears. He doesn't tell them about the 30 rolls of film he took in Iraq, which he still can't bring himself to develop. He doesn't tell recruits about a day not long after he got home, when he was walking in the park with his 12-year-old son. A car backfired, and Hill dove into a ditch, where he lay cowering, suffering from tunnel vision and paralysis until his son phoned Hill's wife and told her there was something wrong with Daddy.
.............
More discouraging is when a willing recruit gets hacked. Hill recently visited a woman who phoned the recruiting station to set up an appointment. When Hill knocked at the woman's door, he found her bloodied and battered. My boyfriend, she told Hill. The Army was a way out for that woman, Hill says. A chance for her to regain some pride and control. But she flunked the aptitude test.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-recruiters21nov21,0,1078869.story?coll=la-home-headlines

every freeper I talk to says that the army is meeting or exceeding quota!

We will now begin to hear about the emergency situations that are causing the military to need more people. It will probably involve mushroom clouds in 45 minutes. The freepers will still not enlist.

Around the middle of next year, the draft will be discussed openly. Liberals will be condemned as unpatriotic for saying "we told you so."

include troops forced to serve longer with stop-loss orders. "Gee, wow, 98% of our troops in Iraq re-enlisted. We didn't expect that . . . hmmm, now how could that happen?" :eyes:

A LOT OF VETS KNOW THE CHIMPANZEE, CHENEY AND WOLFOWITZ ARE DRAFT DODGERS who only want to use up their kids and grand children like they were used. AND THEN THROWN AWAY.

Not Having Fun for Halliburton # 1











Here's how it works. The clowns in DC come up with an annual number, and give it to the Service recruiting commands. The recruiting commands take the number and add a percentage to it (I'm guessing that percentage is probably up to about 30 percent, at least, maybe more--of the total). The HQs divvy the numbers up amongst the regional/area commanders, who then divide them amongst their recruiting districts. Districts that go 'over goal' one month do not get credit for the next month. but area commanders track every body by name, so it is hard to hold applicants back (ie save them for the next month). The recruiting command heirarchy is working a number that is way higher than is actually needed--a goal of 2 per recruiter per month, as depicted in that article, in this environment is absolute CRUELTY.

Also, recruiting districts have other goals--a percentage of say, medical types, or other MOS/NEC school assignments. They are also goaled according to recruit quality, diversity (black, hispanic, but NOT female--I am not shitting you on this). Say you have a goal in your district of X bodies, five of them medics/corpsmen, six black, seven hispanic. Then say you manage to hand in X+10 bodies, eight blacks, but only six hispanics. Guess what? YOU FAILED TO MAKE GOAL. EVERYONE gets shit on, because you were short that one hispanic. That's just how they play it. It's also why you might have some swedish kid reporting to bootcamp somehow reborn with his block checked hispanic, even though his dad was Swen Swenson and his momma was Inga Ingrid.

It's worse than being a used car salesman. I hate what recruiters do, I hate the bullshit they are forced to spew (Decision Dynamics--you saw a bit of it at work in the MM F-911 film) but on a personal level, I feel for recruiters, terribly, horribly. Most of them have stellar records in an operational aspect of service, are mid-career or slightly more (so that they are giving up a LOT if they leave the service) and they are used to behaving honorably, telling the truth, and being upstanding. They are the cream of the crop, and have never failed in any assignment. The vast majority are NOT VOLUNTEERS for the duty. They go through a short bullshit course, report to their districts, full of hope that they can accomplish the mission, and slowly, but surely, are ground down into horrible, awful, lying, cheating people who would sell their mother and pimp their sister to make goal. They work seven days a week, 16 hours a day, and drink themselves to sleep. Marriages are destroyed, lives are ruined, spirits, and health as well, crushed and broken.

It sucks.

and not for me in particular...

Recruiting duty does stink, and I avoided it sucessfully twice by not having a drivers liscense (1st time) and volunteering to stay at sea (or go to Diego Garcia) the 2nd. Sailors who are sucessful at recruiting duty are amply rewarded, the more numerous failures have thier careers destroyed for not accomplishing the impossible.

The 'quota' system is used for reward and punishment; make quota every month of a 3 year tour and you are guarenteed a promotion, miss quota once and you get punishment detail... and if you consistantly beat quota you get your quota raised. I've known sailors who would NEVER beat quota, only meet it, for fear of having it increased.

The bit about army quotas...
The 'official' quota (the one they announce they 'met') is NOT the one they gave the recruiters. They're changing the quotas so they can claim they're always meeting the target number... easy to do when you move the target. Shoot first, announce whatever you hit was the target.

The promotion thing you are referring to for USN personnel was called the FREEMAN PLAN. I was one of the 'mean assholes' who was instrumental in getting it shitcanned. Here's the way it worked, if you were a first class and got an impossibly high number of accessions over a period of many months (12 or 18, it is all mercifully vague now), you got a promotion. As a consequence, there was a lot of cheating going on--money changed hands for contract credit. Back in the day, contract sharing was also considered cheating. That got shitcanned too.

I was assigned as a PIO (Preliminary Investigative Officer) in a massive, systemic recruiter fraud case with the unstated goal to bring in a few recruiter heads on pikes. I was aware of the command's desire to keep the blame at the lowest levels, but I wasn't having any of that crap. Well, you have findings of fact, and findings of opinion. In my findings of fact, I noted that cheating on a broad scale took place across a particular district. In my findings of opinion, which were twenty times longer than the findings of fact, I noted that the entire chain of command "looked the other way" or ACTIVELY facilitated the cheating in order to make goal, reward high flyers, and punish those who didn't have the 'appropriate' motivation. As a consequence of my little blast, none of the recruiters were punished, but the chain of command took a real, and well deserved, beating. Retirements ensued, to put it briefly. The only reason I got away with it and didn't get any massive grief myself is because I was on my way out the door. I managed to get the report due date extended (with a little help from a few pals in DC) until the day before I departed.

I dropped that massive 235 page turd, with boxes of indicting attachments in the form of enlistment packets as attachments, and left. They didn't read the whole thing before I got out the door (the summary was suitably vague, for a reason), and shit a brick when they got to the really bad parts. First, they tried to recall me in an effort to force me to change the document, but since but I had already executed those damn orders, I told them, respectfully, to shove it. And I had already sent an advance copy to the JAG up the chain, so they couldn't pretend the report never existed. When the Recruiting Command called and wanted me to 'come visit' and elucidate more on my findings (i.e. REALLY put the stink on the brass), I told them to call my new boss, but to be advised that I had a hard report date in a quota assignment. See, once you detach, you belong to the GAINING command, even if you are on leave. I also called an old shipmate with more stars than CRUITCOM and way more clout to get those dogs called off, which he did. I'm rare in that I was able to shit in the recruiting punch, and escape relatively unscathed, but it was well deserved on their part.

I also indicated in that last blast that requiring full dress uniform was a morale crusher. They went to uniform of the day as an optional office uniform after that.

Recruiting is a soul crushing exercise. They pick the best and brightest for it because they are not accustomed to failure. It destroys a lot of good people.

You're right about people not wanting to exceed goal for fear of increase. The problem is supervisory snitches, who come in to the stations and go through your contact lists in an effort to force you to produce that extra body. What ends up happening is that the recruiter actually conspires with the enlistee to "not show up" on the day he is scheduled for his MEPS physical, so he can be "saved" for the next month....it is a sick fucking system. Recruiting commands for all services actually have people assigned to boot camps to sniff out lying recruiters--whenever they find a problem child, he's put in an interview room like a cheesy crime drama and berated until he gives up the recruiter. Of course, there are a few sleazy recruiters (the ones who screw the female enlistees are the worst, IMHO).

No one had to force me to join. It was a family tradition thing with me. It saddens me, though, to see kids getting conned (Say, you like underwater basket weaving? You could do that in the military!! Yeah!)...

Turn back into the cesspool, the last resort, for society's broken, lost, and bewildered. Convicted of a youthful indiscretion? You can go to jail or go into the Army. Boyfriend knocking you around? The Army is the answer! You'll learn pride and self-respect! Stuck in a dead-end job in a small town because your local school didn't have the resources to prepare you for anything but burger flipping? Join up! You'll learn all sorts of new skills!

We will soon look back with a certain wistful nostalgia at the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.

and in a related story...

Bill Clears Way for Government to Cut Back College Loans

.....Nearly 100,000 more students may lose their federal grants entirely, as Congress considers legislation that could place more of the financial burden for college on students and their families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/education/21pell.html?oref=login&oref=login

"This job will kill you," one recruiter says under his breath. "This is the most stressful job I have ever had."

Hey, try actually going to Iraq! I hear that job can kill you, too. And I imagine the stress level in Mosul or Fallujah is a teeny bit higher than yours.

what an asshole. and he's telling poor kids what a great opportunity it is for their future. i guess lying to get kids to sign up to go die can be a bit stressful.

I wonder if that asshole recruiter would like to change places with my dead Jon?

I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. I didn't know.

My deepest sympathies. Your son is a hero. There is nothing more honorable than serving one's country. A soldier doesn't get to choose. A soldier signs on to protect his or her country and puts the ultimate faith in his or her fellow citizens. I wish more people understood that it is "We the people" who are responsible. "We the people" allowed this to happen. I have two boys, years away from being "of age." I can't begin to fathom your grief.

"He doesn't tell them what it was like to have his tank hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and then to have the tank tumble into the Euphrates River. He doesn't tell them about the shrapnel in both his legs, or the 38 friends he lost in battle — including one who committed suicide, a man whose memory makes Hill's eyes well with tears. He doesn't tell them about the 30 rolls of film he took in Iraq, which he still can't bring himself to develop. He doesn't tell recruits about a day not long after he got home, when he was walking in the park with his 12-year-old son. A car backfired, and Hill dove into a ditch, where he lay cowering, suffering from tunnel vision and paralysis until his son phoned Hill's wife and told her there was something wrong with Daddy."



THEY SEE THIS IN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST.

You will NEVER see this on FAUX

these recruiters better hope Bush hurries up and further ruins the economy.

Particularly those who operate in high schools. The smarmy ROTC git at the high school I taught at should be the first to go.

One is in high school, and I told my son that if any recruiters come sniffing around, to laugh at them.

They have too many people. There is a program called Blue to Green. If you are one of the ones getting kicked out, you can join the Army.

I can't imagine such a scene in my worst dreams.

I hope your son comes home SOON!

"Earlier this month, Hubbard had a young teenager who was refreshingly animated, chatty — almost personable. Hubbard reacted to the teenager with wild joy. "This is going to be our next soldier!" he announced, slapping the teenager on the back. Hubbard ran through the standard questions, and the teenager answered them all briskly, forthrightly. Then Hubbard said something about high school.

"I was home-schooled," the boy said.

Say what?

Hubbard looked at the boy's application. "Says here you went to Pine Lake High School," he said.

"Yeah," the boy said. "My mother made that name up."

Hubbard had the teenager take the aptitude test, and hours later Hubbard got the news he was half-expecting. The teenager scored a 6. Thirty was failing — 6 was barely breathing. Hubbard put his hands over his face and rubbed his eyes.
"

for the draft? I'm betting draft, I don't think they'd want those that don't meet the current standards to become career, regular army types.

And everyone who takes the test will score as high as possible to try to qualify for something other than 31B: leg infantry.

...that must mean they are going all the way down to 22 or 24 on the ASVAB (CAT IV's--i.e. "MORANS").

It would be interesting to know if they have increased the number of CAT IV's being accepted--I'm guessing that they are. They've already lowered the percentage of HS graduates, and increased the number of GEDs, and Non HS grads accepted (the GEDs and NHS grads have to score HIGHER than the high school grads to qualify--at least that USED to be the policy). They are also eagerly taking OSVETS (other service veterans) hand over fist nowadays. In peacetime, they rarely did this, unless the person was unusually qualified, because you always seem to get problem children or these know-it-alls who wanted to tell everyone how it was done (bigger, better, harder, faster--almost sexy, that!) in their former branch (the inevitable reply is usually "So then why'd ya get out, asshole?).

Force shaping, yeah, that's the ticket!!! Pretty soon, excess fat, sexual orientation, or drug use will no longer be impediments to achieving your dream of spending a hellish year, or two, in the sandbox!

Feeling a draft yet?

from an article "Sign Here, Kid" by MIKE FERNER in CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/ferner11182004.html

"He trolled for teenagers in North Carolina high schools, barked orders at recruits in boot camp, and pulled charred civilian corpses out of cars in Iraq. Now Jimmy Massey is making good on his promise to tell the whole world what he learned as a Marine." this is real.

Military recruiters are nothing more than used-car salesmen wearing uniforms. These pieces of human refuse are trained to be complete and total sociopaths, with the ability to lie through their teeth without the slightest twinge of conscience.

Thanks to a high-school guidance counselor that thought I "needed direction", I was relentlessly hounded by recruiters from the ages of about 16 to 23, at which time I moved from my parents' home and they lost track of me. During that 7-year period, I received a telephone sales pitch from various recruiters about once every 2 weeks. A few went so far as to try and get my parents to try and do their dirty work for them - my Mom was open to the idea, but my Marine Corps vet father wasn't having it - he heard the same bullshit when he was my age, and it landed him in Vietnam. I even had a few show up at my parent's house uninvited to try and persuade me to sign my life away.

My 2 favorite recruiter stories: Some time around 1989, I got a call from a Marine recruiter. I was in a good mood, so I decided I was going to fuck with him a little bit. I cut him off in the middle of a sentence, and I told him, "Hang on a second. I think you're wasting your time here. The Marines don't want people like me.” The recruiter asked me what I meant, and I told him, "I'm gay." His response? "Oh, that's not a problem, as long as you keep it to yourself." BULL FUCKING SHIT. This was 1989, prior to Clinton's executive order relaxing the ban on gays in the military. He was perfectly happy to recruit someone who would then be thrown out and left with a dishonorable discharge on their record - it didn't matter to him, because recruiters weren't evaluated on how their recruits did once they were in the military - only that they get them to sign in the first place. That was an early lesson in how far these guys were willing to go to make their quotas.

Another time, I had just arrived home from my job working the overnight shift as a security guard. I had a few hours to sleep before my classes started in the afternoon, and I hit the sack. About 20 minutes after I went to bed, the phone rang. I answered, and a way-too-cheery voice answered, "Hi, is Jon there?!” I mumbled a response of some kind, and he said "This is Sergeant Blah with the US Whatever Force." My response was simply to hang up the phone without saying another word. About a minute later, the phone rang again - he was calling back. "Jon, this is Sgt. Blah again - I think we got cut off". My response? "We didn't get cut off. I hung up on you" and proceeded to do it again. About a minute later, the phone rang a THIRD time. I was SERIOUSLY pissed, and answered the phone with a stream of expletives, the likes of which only a native New Yorker can deliver. I vaguely remember saying something about the sexual proclivities of his grandmother, and something about fellating a barn animal. The voice on the other end, said... "Jon?!?!?!" It was my mother, calling to see if I got home from work OK. It took a while to undo that damage, for sure.

The recruiters were trying to get my mother to convince ME (and later, my younger brother) to sign up. We're both in our 30s now, and have families of our own - she's long since given up on that idea.

I was trying (futily) to mkae a joke about your mother foloowing (up) recruiters calls.

...I was riding the city bus, and in the back of the bus was a young man who was trying to convince several young people to join the Army. He was selling hard, telling them about the education benefits he had received and about travel and about the excitement of working on weapons systems etc.

I wondered if this is a new ploy. Send recruiters out with no uniform, to infiltrate and soften kids up.

Whoever does the military recruitment mailing list is working overtime..my high school senior daughter is getting shit from all branches of the military every couple weeks. They need to save a few trees and stop mailing stuff out cuz everything we get goes from the mailbox to the trashcan that is right next to the mailbox!

for awol. Just tell em its to fight gay marriage
instead of for oil.

You know the rules....Don't ask don't tell. So they can all be together supporting the Chimp in his war for oil.

...where will the press be then? Will they follow their every move and suggest that they were (take your pick) cowardly/unpatriotic/draft dodgers? After all, that devil Bill Clinton was supposedly a 'draft dodger' and you never heard the end of it. (Never mind that Emperor Flightsuit totally avoided his obligations.)

Mike

Ya'll ready to sign up and do your DUTY? I hope so, being solid citizens and having gotten your chickenhawk Hero re-installed..

I did MY TIME, and now it's YOUR TURN BUUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Sgt USAF 1971-74

I can't WAIT to NOT be allowed to see your body bags come home..or watch you rolling around in a box in the snow with skateboard wheels cos the VA won't give you a wheelchair, or even a wooden leg..

and another thing, when you are sitting in the dark, starving, rolling in pain in the gutter or a cheap apartment, no savings, no retirement, no drugs to stop the shrieking pain - praying to your false god to take your miserable life..

think about US and how we tried to warn you..

do that for me, okay?

and he voted for Kerry. Said the back door draft was a travesty. Said a real draft was unavoidable in his opinion. Said they could give him a dishonorable discharge for giving the honest truth to recruits if they wanted to, but he wouldn't lie to anyone, nor compromise his principles.

He's a nurse and got assigned to recruiting several years ago, before the war, before Bush. He was sick about it all, and was adamant about telling the truth. This is a guy in the Army! It made my heart soar. His answer to my blunt question: why don't you leave if you disagree so much, take the dd? He said they would never let him out and he would be out as soon as his pension came up, in a year and a half. He joined for the education and he believed in serving his country, still does, but not lying to serve a person.

thought that might make some good food for thought.

edited to add: I wrote this reply before I read any of the thread. Perhaps my friend is unusual in his take on his job, but I hope he never gets sent to a war zone, as he does. He does nothing but tell the truth. Sadly, some still sign up. Austin has one of the worst recruiting records around, for all branches, I hear. (I worked around campus, so I knew a recruiter or two from each branch.) Perhaps they (higher ups) overlook the shortage because of the location.

But as a medical recruiter, I suspect your poor friend is responsible for accessions across the entire state, or at least a big chunk of it. I think anyone with nursing skills who strolls into a recruiting station is referred to your friend for processing. Medical recruiting is a tough business--you have to carefully verify education, degrees, and licenses to practice, and there have been instances of recruiter fraud in the past--one of the biggest, many years back, involved a thoracic surgeon who killed a few servicemembers on the operating table, and later it was discovered that he lost his license to practice medicine (for killing a few people on the table), and was recertified in Oklahoma (at the time, all you had to do in that state was kinda sorta SAY you were a doctor!).

The odds are better that most of those in nursing will end up on the "receiving" end of the stick--places like Landstul or Walter Reed or Bethesda. Even in Iraq, they are behind revetments, just a "golden hour" flight by helo from the location of the carnage. That's not to say they can't take an RPG like any other poor bastard in the sandbox.

Foolish, merciless war...foolish, merciless leaders.