Recruiters telling students "War's over"

[Lanya]

Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them to Enlist
Colonel Says Incidents Are the Exception, Not the Rule

Nov. 3, 2006 — - An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.

ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

"Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter.

"No, we're bringing people back," he replies.

"We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says.

Last year, the Army suspended recruiting nationwide to retrain recruiters following hundreds of allegations of improprieties.

One Colorado student taped a recruiting session posing as a drug-addicted dropout.

"You mean I'm not going to get in trouble?" the student asked.

The recruiters told him no, and helped him cheat to sign up.

During the ABC News sessions, some recruiters told our students if they enlisted, there would be little chance they'd to go Iraq.

But Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of U.S. Army recruiting for the entire Northeast, said that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq.

"I would not disagree with that," Manning said. "We are a nation and Army at war still."

Manning looked at the ABC News video of his recruiters.

"It's hard to believe some of things they are telling prospective applicants," Manning said. "I still believe that this is the exception more than the norm. … I've visited many stations myself, and I know that we have many wonderful Americans serving in uniform as recruiters."

Yet ABC News found one recruiter who even claimed if you didn't like the Army, you could just quit.

"It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It's an entry-level discharge so it won't affect anything on your record. It'll just be like it never happened."

Manning, however, disagrees with the ease the recruiter describes.
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http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=2626032

[Brassmask]

Come on, Lanya, the recruiters are under a lot of pressure.  They have to get more people in to fight for Freedom.  Didn't you hear?  There's a war on!  Of course, recruiters are going to say whatever it takes to get people to sign up.

Wonder if there's any correlations between higher recruitment numbers and the public view of the current war being a just and moral one?

[Lanya]

lol...Brass, you got me. ;0)

[BT]

Recruiters shouldn't be lying to potential recruits and potential recruits should know that even if the hostilities in Iraq were over, hostilities could break out anywhere at a moments notice. So if they are interested in branch that is subject to combat deployment they need to have thought about this upfront.

[Lanya]

BT, they should know that, you're right. 
THey also should know that having sex "Just One Time!" can result in a pregnancy, but  that is often difficult to get across.  They should know a lot of things and they simply don't.    They think they're invulnerable.  That, and they're hungry and need work.

[Xavier_Onassis]

There are two dangers with enlisting in the military.

You could get killed. about 3,000 so far in Iraq, plus more in Afghanistan
You could be seriously wounded, perhaps for life. At least 22,000 so far.
More dangerous than being a cropduster or a roofer.

Of course, if you are seriously wounded, you might end up getting paid for the rest of your (probably short) life, plus a snazzy prosthetic limb or two. Or three. Maybe four.