From Talk Left:

The Marines are looking for a few good men.

Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters
Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

"I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," Averhart told the newspaper.

I don’t think 65 year old men are the best way to solve the manpower problems in Iraq. I was under the impression that the Marines are actually at full strength, and don’t anticipate the sort of problems affecting the Army, so this is very strange behavior.

In the summer of 1965, Marine Cpl. Jerry Texiero quietly disappeared from his California base, plagued by personal demons and a mounting opposition to the Vietnam War.

Forty years later, in the summer of 2005, Texiero — now known as Gerome Conti — was taken into custody by police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., after the Marine Corps tracked him down.

Conti, 65, says he was surprised. "I thought they couldn't possibly be looking for me anymore. I would think they would have stopped looking for anybody who had been gone as long as I had."

Conti was held for five months — four in solitary confinement — then given an other-than-honorable discharge in January. If he had been court-martialed and convicted, he could have faced three years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.

OK, just how much does a DD injure a 65 year old man? It can’t affect his Social Security, or any pension he might have put aside through civilian work. This program has two purposes: revenge and warning.

“Getting even” with men who’ve run, and then put in 30 years of productive life has little value for society in general. Having been mostly in civilian business since Viet Nam, I haven’t seen many jobs that require production of a DD214, is the separation document, which lists overseas service, highest rank achieved, and awards and decorations issued during the enlistment, and the form of discharge. Even job applications at banks, where the emphasis is on customer security and fiduciary responsibility don’t ask about military service. I’m sure there are jobs and industries such as those aligned with security that do ask.

The other aspect, of course, is warning those presently in uniform to not desert. Louis Font, one of Mr Conti’s attorneys says:

"My view is that the Marines are trying to send a message to people in the ranks today that they, too, will be required to participate in a war, whether they think it's illegal or immoral[.]

In a related story, it’s reported that there are more than 8,000 deserters from the Armed Forces.

WASHINGTON — At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Since fall 2003, 4,387 Army soldiers, 3,454 Navy sailors and 82 Air Force personnel have deserted. The Marine Corps does not track the number of desertions each year but listed 1,455 Marines in desertion status last September, the end of fiscal 2005, says Capt. Jay Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman.

Desertion records are kept by fiscal year, so there are no figures from the beginning of the war in March 2003 until that fall.
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.

This probably correlates to a poll of last week that mentioned that approximately 72% of troops in Iraq believe we should get out within a year. Surprisingly, the poll also showed that about 90% of the troops believed Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

I guess there’s a feeling in the Pentagon that this desertion thing has to stopped cold now, before the Iran invasion.