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The number of desertions from the military since 9/11 has dropped significantly:
Desertion numbers have dropped since 9/11. The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marine Corps showed 1,603 Marines in desertion status in 2001. That had declined by 148 in 2005.
The desertion rate was much higher during the Vietnam era. The Army saw a high of 33,094 deserters in 1971 — 3.4% of the Army force. But there was a draft and the active-duty force was 2.7 million.
Desertions in 2005 represent 0.24% of the 1.4 million U.S. forces.
Opposition to the war prompts a small fraction of desertions, says Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins. “People always desert, and most do it because they don’t adapt well to the military,” she says. The vast majority of desertions happen inside the USA, Robbins says. There is only one known case of desertion in Iraq.
This is good news right? So how does the USA Today newspaper headline this story:
As far as people deserting or going AWOL the two cases that I have seen happen since 9/11 were both because the soldiers were scared to deploy to a war zone, but both came back after a little while and one got chaptered the other deployed. So even the number of 8,000 deserters during the Iraq War is not factual because of that 8,000 many of them came back and ended up deploying any way.
With media like this is it any wonder the mission in Iraq has lost pubic support.
