In what has to be a blast of great news for Jonah Goldberg and a chance to lose the moniker of "Doughy Pantload", the Army is considering raising the age of enlistment from 34 to 39 for reservists!

The Army is tapping into a new pool of potential recruits for the National Guard and the Army Reserve by raising the maximum enlistment age from 34 to 39, officials said yesterday.

The Army also has increased the number of recruiters on the street by 33 percent and is offering bigger signup bonuses. Last week the Army announced that the National Guard and Reserve were raising the maximum age for recruits from 34 to 39 in order to expand the pool of potential enlistees. The regular Army could not raise the maximum age without congressional approval.

On a more serious note, it's interesting that this latest push, precipitated by the declining numbers of enlistments in the Army has induced their Chickenhawk Secretary, Francis J. Harvey, to decide to start targeting parents and appeal to their patriotism to send their kids off to foreign wars aka The Mess in Mesopotamia:

``The `D' word is the farthest thing from my mind,'' the former defense company executive told a Pentagon news conference, his first since becoming the Army's top civilian official last November.
...
``I'm clearly not going to give up,'' Harvey said. ``At this stage we still have six months to go'' before the recruiting year ends Sept. 30. ``I've challenged our human resource people to get as innovative as they can. And even as we speak we've got a number of new ideas.''

One of those new approaches is designed to persuade more parents to steer their children to the Army.

``We're going to appeal to patriotism,'' he said.

That might be done through a new advertising campaign, he said. He also is encouraging more members of Congress as well as senior Army leaders and Army boosters to spend time in local communities touting the benefits of military service.

Well, it'll be interesing to see how many parents respond to that Patriotic Fervor Secretary Chickenhawk is trying to whip up. I notice that no one is suggesting that Beloved Leader do any Public Service Announcements for the virtues of National Guard and Reserve service...

Just sayin'.