Army Still Misses Recruiting Targets

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Cortnee Smith, a high school honors student, last year had her mind set on joining the National Guard. Her parents supported her. Friends in the Army told her what to expect. Smith took a military aptitude test and told school counselors and a recruiter she planned to join after graduation.

But last fall, her father quashed those plans. Michael Smith, himself a former National Guard recruiter, was called to duty last July and shipped to Iraq. What he saw there evidently persuaded him he didn't want his daughter going.

"He was like, 'No, no, don't go,'" said Smith, 17, now a senior at Shepard High School in southwest suburban Palos Heights. "'Tell to stop contacting you.'"

Cortnee Smith is the face of an alarming problem for the military, as a sharp decline in recruitment has raised fears that the Pentagon could soon confront its biggest manpower crisis in two decades.

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_recruit_040105,00.html