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Waivers make for good soldiers, Army says

A new Army assessment shows that recruits who receive moral, medical or other waivers to enlist are less likely to drop out of basic training, have lower rates of personality disorders and re-enlist in higher numbers than those who meet enlistment standards without a waiver.

People who entered the Army with waivers were also more likely to be high school graduates, were promoted to sergeant about four months faster than those without waivers, and were more likely to receive medals of valor, according to Army data obtained by the House Armed Services Committee.

With the number of people with waivers having grown to about 24 percent of all Army recruits, the assessment has raised a fresh wrinkle in the debate over whether increasing use of moral waivers to meet recruiting goals is hurting the military — and if so, by how much.

Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., a senior committee member, mentioned the statistics during a Thursday hearing to challenge the notion that the case-by-case decisions to relax standards were hurting the military.

“We find in some cases soldiers with waivers have done better than those without,” he said.

The use of waivers does not mean the services are letting hardened criminals into the ranks, Saxton said, noting that moral waivers can be for something as minor as one-time use of marijuana.

Michelle Flournoy of the Center for a New American Security raised the issue when she said the services are resorting to “extraordinary measures” to make recruiting targets — not only in waiving standards, but in other ways, such as boosting bonuses.

One in five new recruits now requires a waiver, and the number of recruits needing moral waivers — primarily for criminal history — has risen 160 percent since 2003, Flournoy said.

After Saxton challenged her, Flournoy said she was only suggesting this was a trend to be monitored.

“It is a mixed bag,” she said. “Some waivered soldiers become models in the Army while others do not,” she said.

Statistics compiled by the armed services committee staffs show the services allowed 42,777 people into the military with waivers in 2006, the last year for which full data are available. The Army accounted for 13,518 of the waivered recruits.

Not all the comparisons were positive for waivered recruits; they are also more likely to be deserters, have a higher rate of rehabilitation failure for alcohol or drug abuse, and have higher rates of misconduct, including an increased likelihood of receiving a bad-conduct discharge or facing a court-martial.