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Army to hit 2006 recruit goal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a big turnaround from a year ago, the U.S. Army will achieve its 2006 goal of 80,000 new soldiers despite lingering reluctance by some potential recruits to join amid the Iraq war....

Adding recruiters, sweetening enlistment bonuses, accepting older volunteers and even tolerating more tattoos helped the active-duty Army rebound from fiscal-year 2005 when it fell almost 7,000 recruits short of 80,000....

But some defense experts argued the Army, which provides the bulk of ground forces in Iraq, had been able to make its goal only by taking lower-quality volunteers who previously might have been rejected.

"The real question is: how low are we willing to let the quality of the Army decline while we continue in this war?" asked Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense in charge of manpower issues under former President Ronald Reagan.

... Critics note the Army has accepted more recruits with past criminal conduct or medical problems and more from its lowest acceptable category of recruits, as well as hiking the age cutoff for enlistment to 42 from 35.

Korb, now an analyst with the Center for American Progress, said of this year's recruits, "There are at least 5,000, maybe as high as 10,000 people, who five years ago couldn't have gotten in."