As a follow up to the story I did on the Sgt. 1st Class Price court martial, I'm trying to put a piece together on recruiting and what's happened to it in light of the war in Iraq.

Testimony given during the case by other drill sergeants pointed to falling recruiting standards and "bottom-of-the-barrel" recruits. This stands to reason: there's a war on, and much of the coverage on the war is about soldier deaths. It's pretty common-sense that recruiting levels are going to drop when there's more news about soldiers dying and serving extended tours in combat zones than about soldiers earning college degrees and getting marketable job skills.

So recruiters are going to have problems meeting their goals, especially when defense officials are talking about expanding the size of the Army by two divisions. The sensible conclusion is that corners are going to get cut, and the recruits showing up at basic training are going to be less educated and less qualified than what trainers have been used to dealing with in the past.

The real trick here is to find people who are actually willing to speak candidly about the issue. It's nearly impossible to find someone in any corporation to discuss problems with that corporation, particularly the Army. And even if they are disgruntled enough to want to talk, they'll want to give you information "off the record" or on the condition of "deep background."

We'll see how it all pans out. I've got two leads so far, and I'm curious to see where they'll take me.

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Paying homage to the Mudville Gazette's latest Open Post.