April 1, 2005

An Army of Not Enough

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From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Army missed its March recruiting goal by 32 percent, and the Marine Corps also came up short, officials said on Friday, as the Iraq war undermined the all-volunteer U.S. military’s ability to sign up new troops. …

The active-duty Army, in danger of missing its first annual recruiting goal since 1999, netted 4,650 recruits in March, far below its goal of 6,800 for the month, Army Recruiting Command spokesman Douglas Smith said. …

The situation was worse in the part-time Army Reserve and Army National Guard, with the Pentagon relying heavily on reservists to maintain troop levels in Iraq.

The Army Reserve missed its March recruiting goal by 46 percent — getting 861 recruits with a goal of 1,600 — and was now nearly 18 percent behind its year-to-date goal.

Pity the poor recruiters.

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We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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