Army Desperately Spin Doctoring Recruitment Numbers

More good news, or, in this case, bad news, which is to say bad news for them which is good news for us. Bad news for them, or more specifically for those of them that are found in the White House, comes to light, when it comes to light at all, on a Friday.

It’s a news management thing. You put out the news on Friday after the evening news has already been fixed, and any bad news stories either air on the weekend when nobody’s paying attention and all the top name reporters are relaxing at home, or they air on Monday but are old bad news by then and don’t get much play.

The Pentagon has been releasing its monthly recruitment stats on the first of the month… until . Now that they’re missing their numbers and the press is starting to pay attention…

Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the May numbers for the active-duty and reserve components of the all-volunteer military will be released on .

“Military recruiting is instrumental to our readiness and merits the earliest release of data. But at the same time, this information must be reasonably scrutinized and explained to the public, which deserves the fullest insight into military performance in this important area,” Krenke said.

is, of course, a Friday. The news is clearly going to be bad, which is to say, good.