Army lowering standards in order to reach recruitment goals

Sounds like another brilliant plan from the Pentagon.

"We have clear experience from the 1970s with recruiting a sizable number of people from the lowest mental categories," said White. After the Vietnam War, the Army accepted a higher proportion of low-scoring recruits, leading to training and discipline problems, he added.

To achieve last month's recruiting targets, 12 percent of those accepted by the Army had the lowest acceptable results. They scored between 16 and 30 points out of a possible 99 on an aptitude test that quizzes potential soldiers on general science, mathematics and word knowledge.

Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told reporters last month that the Army would begin accepting more people who scored in the bottom third on the military's aptitude test, increasing the proportion to 4 percent from 2 percent. The Army had kept the figure at 2 percent since 1990.