The U.S. Army's 2008 recruiting year started off strong over the past four months. As of Dec. 28, 2007, the U.S. Army recruited 10,136 Soldiers for the Active Army and 6,514 Soldiers for the Army Reserve. (Active Army recruiting goal for Fiscal Year 2008 is 80,000 Soldiers and 26,500 for the U.S. Army Reserve.) The great news story is that more than 107,000 young men and women chose to enlist in the Army and Army Reserve in Fiscal Year 2007, during a protracted conflict. The young Americans who enlist from all areas and incomes across this nation know and understand they are joining a warrior culture and willingly accept the inherent risks of national military service. A strong belief in the value of selfless service is what keeps people enlisting and re-enlisting in the Army. Enlistment education quality remains high: last year more than 3,200 new recruits enlisted with their Bachelor's degrees, 250 recruits had their Master's degrees and 20 enlisted after having earned their Doctoral degrees.

Our numbers don't match the National Priorities Project's findings. Their recent report says the number of high school graduates among new Army recruits fell from 83.5 percent in 2005 to 70.7 percent last year. For Fiscal Year 2007, in fact 79 percent of regular Army recruits had a high school diploma and in Fiscal Year 2005 87 percent of regular Army recruits had a high school diploma. (The U.S. Army Recruiting Command shows 81.2 percent of regular Army recruits had a high school diploma in Fiscal Year 2006.)

Keen web researchers will recall the U.S. Army and Defense Department already discussed the Fiscal Year 2007 number of recruits with school diplomas last Oct. 10. See transcript at the following DoD web site: <link>

During that Pentagon press conference, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness David S.C. Chu said Oct. 10, 2007: "I want to speak to those quality standards very briefly. We set three key quality standards in the Department of Defense and have since the mid-1990s. These standards come out of 30-plus years of experience with what works in the volunteer force. We aim to have 90 percent of the new enlistees -- meaning those without prior service, the new enlistees in the Department of Defense -- have a high school diploma as a measure of whether they will succeed in our enterprise. We aim to have 60 percent or more score above average on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. That's our version of the SAT, you might say. And we aim to have less than 4 percent score in Mental Category IV -- that's between the 10th and the 30th percentile -- on that same examination. In other words, we aim for the military to draw an above-average slice of America into its enlisted ranks, that's setting aside the officers, for whom we set even higher standards and who comprise about one-eighth of our total strength. And we made those standards in all force areas, with one exception. The Army, the active Army, did not meet the high school diploma standard. It recruited, in terms of non-prior service enlistees, 79 percent with high school diplomas. That's approximately the national average, and obviously we'd like to do just a bit better. But we're proud of the record overall. And it means the department as a whole met that record."

Retention of these Soldiers also exceeds all expectations, particularly when you consider the volunteer Army and our Nation face a historic challenge during this six-year period of protracted war. Last Fiscal Year, 2007, the active U.S. Army exceeded its retention goals with 112 percent of projected numbers raising their hands to stay with their units; with 119 percent of expected numbers for Reserve Soldiers re-enlisting and 100 percent of desired goal for the National Guard Soldiers proudly staying with their fellow Soldiers.

Public support for our Soldiers remains strong across this proud nation. More Americans should consider stepping forward to answer this call to duty and serve, and support a youth's decision to join our Army. To find out more, visit http://www.goarmy.com//

Thank you.