The Lies My Recruiter Told Me
By Erika Arenger

May 20, 2005 was a good day for high school students. In response to scandalous reports of abuse and threats, the U.S. Army shut down 1,700 recruitment stations, pulling 7,500 recruiters out of schools and into day-long ethics retraining classes. The unethical tactics reported ranged from pushing teens to lie to their parents, to helping them cheat drug tests, to forging documents, to threatening kids with jail for missing appointments.

These coercive tactics reflects recruiters' desperation to meet monthly targets, but the Army is a whopping 40% behind its goal of recruiting 80,000 by October. So recruiters are resorting to financial bribes, misinformation, and outright lies.

Common Recruiter Lies:

· We'll pay for your college
Less than a third of recruits ever get any money for college, and colleges can reduce their financial aid to students by the amount of the Army scholarship so there's no benefit. Even among those who pay a non-refundable deposit into the G.I. Bill fund, two thirds get no money at all. In its first ten years, the program actually made a $720 million profit!

· Military training will help you in civilian employment
Only 12% of male and 6% of female veterans make any use of the skills they gained in the military in their subsequent civilian jobs. Veterans earn 85 cents per hour, or $1700 per year, less than non-veterans of comparable socio-economic status.

Even bleaker, pensions, benefits, and healthcare are being dismantled, leaving many veterans destitute. Around a third of homeless people in the U.S. are military veterans. Two thirds of army families are living on food stamps or other public aid. As Dick Cheney succinctly put it, the military's role is "to fight and win wars… It's not a jobs program."

· You won't see combat
The military can assign you wherever they please. Sue Niederer's son, Seth, joined the military right after college. With financial guarantees and a written promise that he would not see active combat, he enlisted. Five months later he was dead.

He had been assigned to find enemy remote-controlled bombs. His mother said, "They are supposed to call for experts in explosives. By the time you call for an expert, you're dead. These guys are sitting ducks every single day. They didn't have proper vests, the helmets are questionable, they didn't have computers." (counterpunch.org, 5/22-23/05)

What They DON'T Tell You:

· War-related health risks
In addition to the fears of combat death and injury, soldiers have many health-related concerns, from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to tuberculosis. But probably most serious, and least talked about, is soldiers' exposure to the radioactive waste left behind by armor-piercing Depleted Uranium (DU) shells, which the U.S. used extensively in both Gulf Wars.

The American Gulf War Veterans Association reports that over 30% of the 697,000 soldiers in the 1991 war are chronically ill and receiving disability benefits. Children born to Gulf War veterans suffer extremely high rates of birth defects. The Pentagon denies it, but most health experts and independent scientists believe this extraordinary level of illness is the result of DU radiation (International Action Center).

· Systemic racism
Black and brown soldiers fill the bottom ranks of the military, often doing the most undesirable and dangerous jobs with a much slower rate of promotion than their white counterparts.

Aiden Delgado, an Iraq War vet, spoke about the anti-Arab bigotry during his training. "In the early stages, I remember Army chants. We sang in cadences. And the chants had anti-Arab themes. Like burning turbans, killing ragheads, killing the Taliban… My own commander was infamous for anti-Arab speeches."(blackcommentator.com) Delgado also explained that "Hajji" is the new slur for Arabs and Muslims. "It is used extensively in the military… with the same kind of connotation as 'gook,' 'Charlie,' or the n-word. Official Army documents now use it in reference to Iraqis or Arabs. It's real common."

· Pernicious sexism
More than 70% of women who have served in the military have reported sexual harassment, and many on multiple occasions. It's estimated that around 30% of female soldiers experience an attempted or completed rape (Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center).