Looking for old blood

Canadian political parties aren't the only groups trying to muster all available troops, as the U.S. Army's lack of recruits has pushed the Army into targeting past military members:

The U.S. Army, fresh off missing its latest annual recruiting goal, has launched an unprecedented effort to coax former troops to sign up again for active-duty military service, officials said on Tuesday.

The Army this month began contacting 78,000 people who previously served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to pitch them on the idea of leaving behind their civilian lives and returning for another stint in uniform, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon...

Fiscal 2005 was one of the most difficult recruiting years since the birth of the all-volunteer U.S. military in 1973, with the active-duty Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard all missing their goals.

I have to wonder how long it'll take the Army to notice that some of those recently-active troops may be in no condition to return to the battlefield thanks to the lack of funding for Veterans Affairs. It's bad enough for Bushco to have dishonoured the returned troops by ignoring their needs...but all the worse if that was only an effort to make another stint in Iraq look good in comparison.