Lost in Deployment: How the Army Misplaced 60,000 Soldiers

http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1111-06.htm

I am a defense policy analyst working for an independent think tank in Cambridge, MA. A few weeks ago I was preparing for a briefing we organized in Washington called "Stretched too thin? The Effect of Recent Military Operations on America's Armed Forces" <http://www.comw.org/pda/041022milops.html >. I was putting together some numbers on Army operational deployments overseas during the past decade.My task appeared to be simple, but it would prove difficult. And it would end up revealing a substantial error in Army personnel accounting.

One of the places I was looking for data was a quarterly personnel statistics report < http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/miltop.htm > produced by the DoD Directorate for Information Operations and Reports.This report gives a snapshot in time of where troops are located, listing numbers of active component personnel (down to the single digits) stationed or deployed to 140 countries. However, it contained enough accounting anomalies (1) to make it impossible to use this report to arrive at an accurate number of active component personnel deployed to OIF or OEF, currently the two most important operational deployments.It was likewise impossible to determine from its tables the total number of personnel stationed or deployed overseas.

I was also looking for information on the U.S. Army's Operations Webpage < http://www.army.mil/operations/ >. I noted that it stated that: "There are approx. 333,000 Soldiers deployed overseas in 120 countries."Similar statements appear in the annual Army Posture Statement, in Army PowerPoint briefings, and frequently end up in press articles.(2)

-snip-
(this snip tells of the error count he found and how the army has now changed their stats)

The fact that official sources are producing mistaken information is disturbing. It is more so that this misinformation is quickly picked up and repeated in the press. Already this year we have witnessed the Department of State embarrassed when their annual incidence of terror report was shown to have significant inaccuracies.(3)

This sloppiness in the bureaucracy may be the result of a "cascade effect" from the attitudes of the highest government leaders who seem to have few qualms about playing fast and loose with the facts they present to the American public. Hopefully the press will henceforth demand higher standards from DoD in the reporting of basic facts about the Armed Forces of the United States.
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there are footnotes

humans, in this administration, are not important. If they aren't making a profit for bushcorp, then who cares who or where they are, huh? WTF!

If the 'b' word is so hot on out-sourcing jobs, why not out-source the military and let his capitalist pig buddies pay for it?

We are descending straight into hell, and this is just the beginning.

what's a couple of soldiers? :shrug: