Little Effort Made to Find Deserters

[kskiska]

Source: Examiner

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - There is no crack team of bounty hunters, no elite military unit whose job is to track them down and bring them in.

Despite a rise in desertions from the Army as the Iraq war drags on into a fifth year, the U.S. military does almost nothing to find those who flee and rarely prosecutes those it gets its hands on.

An Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures shows that 174 troops were court-martialed by the Army last year for desertion - a figure that amounts to just 5 percent of the 3,301 soldiers who deserted in fiscal year 2006. The figures are about 1 percent or less for the Navy and the Marines, according to data obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act.

Some deserters are simply allowed to return to their units, while the majority are discharged in non-criminal proceedings on less-than-honorable terms.

Pentagon officials say that while the all-volunteer military is stretched thin by the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of deserters represents an extremely small percentage of the armed forces, and it would be a poor use of time to go after them, particularly when there is a war on.

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/a-803986~Little_Effort_Made_to_Find_Deserters.html

[tanyev]

1. Not enough troops to find the deserting troops.

Hmmm.....

[Barrett808]

2. How aggressive were efforts to find Vietnam deserters?

It might be interesting to compare.

[3waygeek]

8. Here's where they can find one...

[Wildewolfe]

3. This is nothing new....

... it was this way when I was in the service in the mid 80s too. The most effort you saw would have been the company first sergeant or soldiers platoon sergeant go to the soldiers house to check on him but after declared officially awol or 30 days later a deserter they just let them go until they effectively bust themselves.

[Benhurst]

4. To be fair, little if any effort was expended trying to find George W. Bush when he went AWOL. NT

[Chemical Bill]

11. Yeah, they did set a precedent with the pResident. n/t

[Vidar]

5. Good.

[L0oniX]

6. I wish they would all dessert because that would be the right moral thing to do...

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." -- Henry Kissinger

[David__77]

7. A Democratic president should pardon them all.

That goes without saying here, I would hope.

[superconnected]

9. I was wondering where I could donate money to the deserters

:)

[MikeNearMcChord]

10. Usually it takes something simple as a traffic stop

that will get a deserter arrested. Not unusual for people who desert after a few years get caught that way.