Lavish benefits help Ore. Guard get recruits

[unhappycamper]

Lavish benefits help Ore. Guard get recruits
By Pat Caldwell - (Ontario) Argus Observer
Posted : Saturday Feb 23, 2008 17:53:01 EST

ONTARIO, Ore. — In some respects, the recruiting outlook for Eastern Oregon’s Army National Guard unit should be bleak. After all, America is entering the fifth year of a war in Iraq that is, in some portions of the nation, deeply unpopular.

Also, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the part-time Guard force across America has weathered mobilizations and deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the past, deployments of large citizen-soldier units were rare. Now, the Guard is just as likely to be called to fight in the global war on terror as any active-duty army unit, a shift in policy that has strained the nation’s reserve forces.

Yet senior officers of Eastern Oregon’s Guard unit, the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Regiment, say they are seeing more and more people seek out the Guard to serve, and they point to a single reason: benefits.

At no other time in the history of the Guard are the benefits for joining up so lavish, and at no time have the prospects to gain a full-ride college education been so good.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/02/ap_oregonguard_080223/

[lligrd]

1. Bribing The Young To Risk Their Lives For Dubious Promises

of economic stability, pathetic.