[Patrick Appel] A reader points out something that I had missed earlier:
Your comments and the associated article on "officers' feelings on how to improve recruitment" will leave a lot of people with a heavily distorted impression. The data from the survey clearly shows that it was heavily skewed towards a much older pool of retired officers: - 89% of respondents are over 50. 72% are over 60. 38% are over 70. - 92% are retired. 71% have been retired for more than 10 years.
If we were to try and define a typical respondent, he would be a 65 year old former colonel who entered service in the late 1960's and retired in the 1990s. Hardly representative of today's officer corps.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/02/military-recruitment-ii/219800/
