Army Revises Upward Number of Desertions in ’06

A couple things come immediately to mind. First is, if the troops are all so gung-ho about this occupation, why are so many fleeing?

The second thing is the highlighted words. What the fuck is this? The Army has to "calculate" desertions? They don't know? The soldiers are there or they are not there. What's to "calculate"? Call roll. If someone doesn't answer, you pretty much can assume they're gone, right?

I will give a little quarter here. If you call roll in Iraq or Afghanistan and someone doesn't respond, they might be MIA (missing in action) or POW (prisoners of war). So some "calculating" is necessary. But even then, I would assume they had already been accounted for as captured or a probable casualty.

A total of 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the Army last year, or 853 more than previously reported, according to revised figures from the Army.
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The new calculations by the Army, which had about 500,000 active-duty troops at the end of 2006, significantly alter the annual desertion totals since the 2000 fiscal year. [emphasis mine]

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