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Army Desertion Rate Up 80 Pct. Since '03
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, The Associated Press
2007-11-17
WASHINGTON -

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

"We're asking a lot of soldiers these days," said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. "They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."

The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

The increase comes as the Army continues to bear the brunt of the war demands with many soldiers serving repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders - including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey - have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are under way to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.

"We have been concentrating on this," said Wallace. "The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers."

Still, he noted that "the military is not for everybody, not everybody can be a soldier." And those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it, he said.

While the Army does not have an up-to-date profile of deserters, more than 75 percent of them are soldiers in their first term of enlistment. And most are male.

Soldiers can sign on initially for two to six years. Wallace said he did not know whether deserters were more likely to be those who enlisted for a short or long tour.

At the same time, he said that even as desertions have increased, the Army has seen some overall success in keeping first-term soldiers in the service.

There are four main ways that soldiers can leave the Army before their first enlistment contract is up:

-They are determined unable to meet physical fitness requirements.

-They are found to be unable to adapt to the military.

-They say they are gay and are required to leave under the so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

-They go AWOL.

According to Wallace, in the summer of 2005, more than 18 percent of the soldiers in their first six months of service left under one of those four provisions. In June 2007, that number had dropped to about 7 percent.

The decline, he said, is largely due to a drop in the number of soldiers who leave due to physical fitness or health reasons.

Army desertion rates have fluctuated since the Vietnam War - when they peaked at 5 percent. In the 1970s they hovered between 1 and 3 percent, which is up to three out of every 100 soldiers. Those rates plunged in the 1980s and early 1990s to between 2 and 3 out of every 1,000 soldiers.

Desertions began to creep up in the late 1990s into the turn of the century, when the U.S. conducted an air war in Kosovo and later sent peacekeeping troops there.

The numbers declined in 2003 and 2004, in the early years of the Iraq war, but then began to increase steadily.

In contrast, the Navy has seen a steady decline in deserters since 2001, going from 3,665 that year to 1,129 in 2007.

The Marine Corps, meanwhile, has seen the number of deserters stay fairly stable over that timeframe - with about 1,000 deserters a year. During 2003 and 2004 - the first two years of the Iraq war - the number of deserters fell to 877 and 744, respectively.

The Air Force can tout the fewest number of deserters - with no more than 56 bolting in each of the past five years. The low was in fiscal 2007, with just 16 deserters.

Despite the continued increase in Army desertions, however, an Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures earlier this year showed that the military does little to find those who bolt, and rarely prosecutes the ones they find. Some are allowed to simply return to their units, while most are given less-than-honorable discharges.

"My personal opinion is the only way to stop desertions is to change the climate ... how they are living and doing what they need to do," said Wallace, adding that good officers and more attention from Army leaders could "go a long way to stemming desertions."

Unlike those in the Vietnam era, deserters from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may not find Canada a safe haven.

Just this week, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeals of two Army deserters who sought refugee status to avoid the war in Iraq. The ruling left them without a legal basis to stay in Canada and dealt a blow to other Americans in similar circumstances.

The court, as is usual, did not provide a reason for the decision.
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Energy corridors proposed across public lands in West
By MATTHEW BROWN
Asscociated Press Writer
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.16.2007

BILLINGS, Mont. - The Bush administration is proposing more than 6,000 miles of "energy corridors" for future pipelines and transmission lines in the West, crossing dozens of sensitive areas including national monuments, recreation areas and scenic rivers.
Federal officials say the 3,500-foot-wide corridors are needed to keep pace with the electricity demands of a swelling population and the region's increasing oil and gas production.
"That's where a significant amount of our industrial and consumer growth is going to happen in the United States — in the West and Southwest," said Department of Energy spokesman Jonathan Shradar. "Demand for electricity will increase and on the federal lands these corridors will be sufficient to meet that demand."
The plan, developed over two years, would affect federal lands in 11 western states. It was released Nov. 8 by the Departments of Interior, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce and Defense.
Environmental groups say the plan would allow industrial projects to be carved through some of the most scenic open lands in the country. That includes proposed routes through portions of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, the foothills of the Organ Mountains in New Mexico and Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in Wyoming.
"On a map these look like clean, sterile lines going from point A to point B," said Liz Thomas with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "You get on the ground, it's not like that. There are canyons in the way, rivers, pueblo sites, national parks, national monuments, people's favorite hiking and hunting areas."
Critics also say the plan does not adequately account for an emerging shift in the nation's energy policy — away from conventional fossil fuels and toward renewables like wind and solar power. They say this could change where future power lines are needed.
Congress directed the administration to identify the corridors in its 2005 energy bill. The project is a year behind schedule.
Nevada would have the longest corridors, totaling 1,630 miles, followed by California with 814 and Arizona with 644.
In Arizona, the corridors are expected to radiate from central Phoenix and run through the Tonto, Apache-Sitgreaves, Kaibab and Coronado national forests. One corridor is planned to extend across the Utah state line and several others stretch across the western half of the state.
Almost two-thirds, or about 3,700 miles, are proposed along existing road or utility right of ways. Those would be widened in many cases to allow for a dramatic expansion of infrastructure — as many as nine large transmission lines or 29 natural gas pipelines in each corridor.
Demand for electricity in the West is projected to increase by about 20 percent over the next decade, according to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council. On the supply side, booming oil and gas production in places like Wyoming has outpaced new pipeline construction. That has caused bottlenecks that the government blames for sharp fluctuations in natural gas prices.
Within the new corridors, construction of transmission lines and pipelines would remain the job of the private sector. Yet such projects would face a streamlined regulatory process, and could be approved more quickly than under existing rules, Shradar said.
State laws and regulations still would apply to projects crossing nonfederal land.
In the past, however, those local hurdles have been minimal compared to getting approval from federal land managers, said Doug Larson, executive director of the Western Interstate Energy Board.
Larson said the creation of new corridors would "send a signal" to potential developers that they can expect easier approval if they follow the federal routes. He added that by designating corridors ahead of time, controversies over environmental or other impacts can be hashed out in advance instead of on a project-by-project basis.
Environmental groups conceded the draft plan was an improvement over prior versions. Those gave little regard to the type of landscape the corridors passed through. In the latest draft, for example, the number of national parks, monuments and recreation areas crossed dropped from 29 to 12. The number of national wildlife refuge crossings dropped from 15 to 3.
Heather Feeney with the federal Bureau of Land Management, one of the lead agencies involved, said it was impossible to avoid environmentally sensitive areas altogether.
But by designating corridors, she said, the government hoped to "bundle future projects so they're not totally scattered across the landscape."
Public meetings on the proposed plan begin January 8, with meetings scheduled throughout the West. After the end of a 90-day public comment period on Feb. 14, the agencies involved will move "fairly aggressively" to adopt a final plan by the fall of 2008, Shradar said.
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US prison system 'costly failure'
19 November 2007

The US prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to the taxpayer, researchers say.

There are more than 1.5 million people in US state and federal jails, a report by a Washington-based criminal justice research group, the JFA Institute says.

Inmate numbers are projected to rise by 192,000 in five years, costing $27.5bn (£13.44bn) to build and run jails.

The JFA recommends reducing the number and length of sentences.

The Unlocking America report, which was published on Monday, also advocated changing terms of parole and finding alternatives to prison as part of a major overhaul of the US justice system.

"There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer," said JFA president James Austin.

Women convicts

The report said that US crime rates, which have been in decline since the 1990s, are about the same as those for 1973.

It says the incarceration rate has soared because sentences have got longer and those who violate parole or probation are more likely to be given prison terms.

The report said that every year hundreds of thousands of Americans are sent to jail "for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to society".

It cited several examples including a Florida woman's two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee at another car in a traffic row.

Its recommendations run counter to the Bush administration's policy of longer, harsher sentences, which the government says has contributed to falling violent crime and murder figures.

The JFA researchers found that women represented the fastest-growing sector of the US prison population.

The report was funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and the Open Society Institute.
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