Army recruits shortfall blamed on Iraq war critics

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Edited to add: MBC makes a great point about lengthening of tours, and I agree with it completely.

To expand on that a little...

You have a Stop Loss which means you can't get out if you have a job that they need people in. Then you have the people who are being told re-up for another x years for little to no bonus or we'll extend you for x years period.

And the newest phenomen is people coming back from deployment, thinking their next tour isn't for a year due to the deployment schedule and a month later they find out they have to go back in 2 months.

People aren't just being extended in Iraq and Afghanastan (Yup, still lots of troops there though you only hear about them when they die or find someone... Where's OBL??). They are being extended on WestPacs, Oki tours (for the MC) and other non combat deployments.