August 11, 2007 (LPAC)--Army officials were all atwitter yesterday over meeting or acceding the Army's recruiting and retention goals for the month of July. All three components, the Active Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard also all expect to make their overall goals for the year, as well, despite the fact that all three components fell well below their targets in both May and June.

Not said by the Army but noted by the Washington Post, today, is the monetary cost of this recruiting effort. On July 25, the Army began paying a $20,000 cash "quick ship" bonus to any recruits willing to go to basic training before the end of the September. The cash bonus for two year enlistees has been raised to $20,000 from $6,000 before May. The Army is also boosting the size of the recruiter force, including by offering former recruiters $2,000 bonuses for each soldier they enlist. The Army is also offering cash bonuses to newly trained soldiers if they go back to their communities and succeed in bringing in new recruits. This is all in addition to other well known measures that the Army has taken, including lowering qualifications, offering "morale waivers" to recruits with criminal records, and raising the maximum age limit to 42.

While the Army was hyping its recruitment numbers, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, George Bush's "war czar," was telling National Public Radio that the draft has "always been an option on the table" and that it "makes sense to certainly consider it." According to the Post report, Lute noted that the military is competing for a "very narrow slice" of high school graduates and that the draft is one of several options to prevent the Army from breaking. Of course, going to the draft "would be a major policy shift... to move to some other course."