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12/30/2009 - CAMP TAJI, Iraq -- More than 330 Iraqi air force recruits marched in a parade before beginning their initial basic military course Dec. 28, at Camp Taji, Iraq. Normally recruits attend the 12-week BMT course at the Iraqi Army Regional Training Center prior to reporting to the air force training school on Camp Taji for a course called BMT Top Off. However, the RTC did not have the capacity to house the recruits until January 2010. Instead of sending the recruits home, Master Sgt. Paula Gaffney, a BMT instructor and Air Force advisor, suggested they have the BMT...

"The only reason we are staying here, away from our families, away from the cities, away from candy bars [and] all these other things is because we are waiting to meet with the enemy."

Reporting from Minneapolis -- Tall and lean, with a wispy mustache and shy smile, 17-year-old Burhan Hassan chalked up A's last fall as a senior at Roosevelt High School, vowing to become a doctor or lawyer. After school and on weekends, he studied Islam at the nearby Abubakar As-Saddique mosque. He joined its youth group. "He wanted to go to Harvard," said his uncle Osman Ahmed. "That was his dream." Instead Hassan has gone to Somalia, the anarchic East African nation that his family fled when he was a toddler. On election day, Hassan and five other youths slipped away...

BAGHDAD, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A boy masquerading as a flower seller blew himself up last September before the house of Sheikh Imad Jassem, the joint-leader of the Sons of Iraq in Tarmiya, 25 km north of Baghdad. The boy, as young as 10 years old, had been stalking Jassem for three days before tripping on his flip-flops several meters away from his target. The bomb exploded prematurely, seriously wounding the leader. The innocent and immature young have been recruited and trained to be suicide bombers of the al-Qaida network in Iraq to attack Iraqi high-profile officials as well as...

A report published by the Heritage Foundation refutes the picture painted by the msm that our military is made up of the poor and disadvantage who cannot find employment elsewhere. “For example, 70% of Army recruits are from families of middle or higher, almost 25%from the richest family quintile”

INDIANAPOLIS, May 18, 2008 – While race car drivers sped around the track trying to bump slower competitors out of next week’s 92nd Indianapolis 500 lineup, 55 military recruits took a step to shift their lives into high gear. Mindy Andrews, right hand raised, takes the oath of enlistment from U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana during a ceremony at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Andrews was one of 55 Hoosiers to take part in the annual "Bump Day" tradition. Defense Dept. photo by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Coinciding with “Bump Day,” the last day...

For over a year, we have been waging a relentless, nearly solitary battle in apprising the Congress and the American public about a billion dollar boondoggle and scandal: the lack of credible Arabic translators for our national security and intelligence agencies. As a result hundreds have been killed in Iraq from infiltration of our military and civilian intelligence agencies by agents of Islamist terrorists. Our FBI and CIA have been infiltrated by Muslim linguists who have successfully evaded polygraph tests and been able to pass on vital information to terror groups in the Middle East such as Hezbollah. Tens of...

WASHINGTON, April 18, 2008 – When 20 recruits gathered yesterday at the Baltimore Military Entrance Processing Station to sign their enlistment contracts, none needed a pen. U.S. Army recruit Krista N. Hearne, 19, of Salisbury, Md., poses with the electronic Army enlistment contract she signed with her fingerprint as she became the first person to enlist in the U.S. military using biometric signatures. Photo by Army Lt. Col. Robert S. Larsen   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Instead, they read their contracts on a computer screen, then pressed their index fingers onto an electronic pad next to it,...

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2008 – Information culled from 48 foreign fighters in custody of Multinational Force Iraq yields a profile for al Qaeda foreign terrorists, a senior military official said yesterday. When analyzed, officials found that foreign terrorists had comparable recruitment stories, including why they joined al Qaeda and what they did once they were smuggled into Iraq, said Air Force Col. Donald Bacon, chief of special operations and intelligence information for Multinational Force Iraq. Bacon spoke with online journalists and “bloggers” during a conference call. All of the captured or surrendered foreign terrorists were single men, and they averaged...

Ideas have consequences. Inaction has consequences. For the past several years, I’ve chronicled the left’s escalating war on military recruiters—and the apathetic, weak-kneed response to it. The anti-recruiter thugs on college campuses and in liberal enclaves have thrived thanks to a combination of public indifference, law enforcement fecklessness and left-wing ideological apologism. It has now been a week since the Times Square military recruitment center bombing. The investigation continues—and so does the left’s denial of the ongoing campaign against military recruiters. At a national conference of anarchists in Washington, D.C., last weekend, a “solidarity sticker” glorifying the biker bomber made...

WASHINGTON, March 7, 2008 – Vice President Richard B. Cheney thanked recruits and sailors at Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill., today for choosing to serve a cause greater than themselves in the struggle against terrorism. Cheney talked with about 4,000 recruits and sailors at the center outside Chicago, where his own father trained for his Navy service during World War II. The vice president compared today’s military members who, like their World War II predecessors, put their own interests aside to serve “when the country needed you most.” “Your presence at Great Lakes proves that you understand the core Navy...

Al-Qaida in Afghanistan needs electrical engineers, medical doctors, Islamic scholars and, in particular, understanding wives, announced the movement's commander in a new audio message Thursday. Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed, the self-proclaimed leader of the movement's Afghan branch, gave a 45-minute recruitment speech in a tape entitled, "They've lied, now comes the combat," that appeared on militant Islamist Web sites, and slammed Arab leaders for being traitors. He urged scholars, doctors and electrical engineers to join the Mujahideen in their fight "because the combat needs all expertise and efforts." Abu al-Yazeed also called on the parents to allow their sons to fight....

RADICAL British Jihadist groups are using Facebook and other social networking sites to recruit members and distribute extremist literature. A private Facebook group called Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama'ah, the name of a successor organisation to the banned extremist group Al Muhajiroun, has been operating since early 2007. The Facebook group has links posted to extremist literature by the jailed radical preachers Abu Hamza al-Misri and Abu Qutada calling for the waging of armed jihad against the British and American governments. There is also literature demanding the expulsion of any Muslim who votes in elections or "provides assistance" to the 'kuffar',...

BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi recruits moved through a security checkpoint near the front entrance of the FuratTraining Center, Feb. 10. “We are here to become Iraqi Police (IP) officers, to get a good job and we are here for our country,” said Jabbav Mitir, one of the more than 1,000 IP recruits who arrived at the Furat Training Center to begin their training to become Iraqi policemen. Mitir, like some of his fellow recruits, was formerly a part of the ‘Sons of Iraq’; a citizen security program, and now wants to give more back to his country by...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 2008 – Al Qaeda is recruiting and training boys -- some younger than 11 -- to kidnap and kill, a senior U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said today. Five training tapes recovered in a December raid show as many as 20 boys, most thought to be younger than 11 years old, carrying automatic weapons and grenades, storming homes in mock kidnappings and assassinations, and sitting in a circle chanting their allegiance to al Qaeda. Portions of the tapes were aired for journalists at a news conference in Iraq today. “Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the...

A terrorist conspiracy to attack military sites and synagogues developed among prison Muslims for years, and yet hardly any mention of the conspiracy made the news. The Los Angeles Times picks up the story no one else seems interested in reporting, noting that two of the accused have pled guilty to the conspiracy: Two members of a prison-based Islamic terrorist cell that authorities say was poised to attack military sites, synagogues and other targets across Southern California pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to conspiring to wage war against the United States. The plot, which police stumbled upon during a...

One in a series of articles about three teenagers and their wartime enlistment in the Marines. CAMP PENDLETON - A Marine recruit stumbled from the ranks and collapsed on a dirt trail. A corpsman, her medical bag bouncing in the dust, hustled over to the fallen man. The recruit was bathed in sweat, his face clammy and sickly green. As the troop column marched on, the drill instructor cried out, "Here comes the silver bullet!" The recruit was about to receive the ultimate indignity -- a shiny rectal thermometer to check his body temperature. It happened on the trail for...

The proportion of black Marine Corps recruits jumped by 40 percent over the last 12 months, halting a seven-year slide that has worried service leaders. In fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, blacks were 10.9 percent of Marine recruits, up from 7.8 percent in 2006, the smallest proportion of black recruits for the Corps since the all-volunteer force began 33 years ago. The increase is timely, given a Marine Corps plan to expand its active force by 27,000 over the next five years in response to protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other worldwide commitments. All active services met...

ISKANDARIYAH — Shiite and Sunni Muslims came from far and wide Sept. 2 to begin working together for the greater good of their country. Sparked by a successful recruiting campaign, these Iraqis crossed over their sectarian boundaries and started their journey toward becoming the newest members of the Iraqi Army. Congregating at the compound of 2nd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 8th Iraqi Army Division, located adjacent to Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah, home of 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, these new recruits arrived by the truck load to be processed and transported to their basic...

LONG POND, Pa., Aug. 6, 2007 – Marine Gen. Peter Pace enlisted about 150 recruits at the Pocono International Raceway yesterday during a swearing-in ceremony before NASCAR’s Pennsylvania 500. Marine Gen. Peter Pace , Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, center, poses for a picture with young men and women about to join the U.S. Army during an enlistment ceremony at the NASCAR Pennsylvania 500 auto race at the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa., Aug. 5, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Pace,...