Later on after they had time to analyze the content of all those calls, it turns out they weren't calling up to ask about joining the military - they were calling to ask how to legally avoid the draft they were sure was soon to follow. The numbers of those volunteering for military service barely changed.

At that, for a while at least, Shrub did man up the draft boards and have them ready to go in case recruitment totally dried up.

And those already in the military got nailed with a "stop loss" order - what they referred to as a "back door draft" - they weren't allowed to get out when their enlistments were up and basically told they would be kept on active duty until further notice.

Absolutly not true. There was a surge in volunteers to all branches after 9-11. I was on active duty at that time and knew several recruiters. There was never a stop gap issued unless it was for a critical job.(Navy)
Also at that time people were being asked to take early retirement cash incentives to get out etc....
Falls back to if you dont know what you are talking about....

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86 300SDL. 250,xxx on #14 Head. One eye always on temp gauge.. Cruising towards 300K

I know I saw video interviews with people who claimed they were being stop-lossed. It wasn't an isolated story.

But who knows, I wasn't there, didn't see the documents.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

You need to study up on the subject of "stop loss"
"Currently, the Army is the only service that uses the stop-loss program. As of January, 13,217 soldiers had tours extended under the stop-loss policy."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/18/pentagon.stoploss.ending/index.html

Thank you. I was going to make reference to people I personally knew that had been affected by this, but your reference was much more effective.

As for numbers of people actually joining going up after 9/11.... considering it was 8 years ago, I may be misquoting the article - it could be that the number of PHONE CALLS by those seeking to join the military didn't change, while there was a spike in phone calls by those seeking to avoid the draft. Actually, I would be pleased if that were indeed the case and recruitment did go up following that event.

As for getting people to retire early/paying them to get out....uhh, dude, that was the early and mid 90's when that was going full force - we're talking post-2003 post-Iraqi Freedom - and the Navy was the only one that had early retirement going - when they started the force reduction under Dad Bush in the early 90's, Army and Air Force were kicking people out literally days short of retirement - Navy was the only one that slowed down recuritment, shut down one or more boot camps, and offered people an early reduced retirement, so they at least got something if they were short of 20 years besides a plane ticket home.

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Just say "NO" to Ethanol - Drive Diesel

Mitchell Oates
Mooresville, NC
'87 300D 212K miles
'87 300D 151K miles - R.I.P. 12/08
'05 Jeep Liberty CRD 67K miles
Grumpy Old Diesel Owners Club