General: June 2005 Archives

Another increasingly unpopular war, in Iraq, is largely responsible for making it harder for Army recruiters to find 80,000 more young Americans who are willing to serve their country from a pool of some 60 million candidates ages 18 to 35.

“The biggest problem today is parents,” said Staff Sgt. Kenneth Bishop, an Iraq war-veteran recruiter based in High Ridge, Mo. “A lot of young men and women want to enlist, but their parents are afraid for them.”

Or as Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Waud, a career recruiter based in Simi Valley, Calif., put it: “(Parents) say they don’t want to send their son or daughter off into danger. There’s a lot of misconceptions about Iraq. Frankly, percentage-wise you face more of a risk driving on the freeways out here.” (source)

Yeah, we all read about all the “misconceptions” on Iraq every day in the news; about all the car bombs, suicide bombers, and the daily tally of our dead soldiers.

I wonder if Sgt. Waud has been to Iraq? It’s easy to say such things sitting in a recruiting office in Simi Valley, California.

Related article
'Don't ask, don't tell' under attack

Despite Vice President Dick Cheney's confident assertion two weeks ago that the insurgency was in its “last throes,” the story featured one particularly telling observation from a U.S. officer who works with the task force overseeing training of Iraqi troops, regarding how easy it was for the insurgency to replenish its forces. “We can’t kill them,” he said. “When I kill one, I create three.” (source)