In The Army's Hard Sell, Bob Herbert is being totally disingenuous when he tries to show that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was initially unprepared for how long the "war" in Iraq would last. He quotes the secretary as saying:

"I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."

Secretary Rumsfeld was clearly talking about the use of force against the Iraqi military in the traditional campaign to liberate the country and evict Saddam from power. It's even more obvious when you read "Iraqi Army is Tougher Than US Believes" from commondreams.org, a liberal organization who tried to pursuade the public that our campaign would be significantly more difficult than the first Gulf War. Secretary Rumsfeld's comments were judged as, "ideologically driven and strategically ill-informed."

The war began on March 20, 2003 and Baghdad was captured on April 9, 2003 less than 3 weeks later.

-----------------

In addition, much is made of the fact that the Army has not met it's recruiting goals for the last several months. What is not taken into account is that these goals are calculated by simply dividing the annual target by twelve, regardless of the fact that the majority of recruiting success takes place in the summer after graduations.
Also, retention goals have been met or exceeded which would seem strange if those currently enlisted thought they were part of a lost cause.

While recruiting numbers for May were lower than hoped - something defense officials acknowledged was expected during the slow spring recruiting season - every service met or exceeded its retention goals for the month.

And as Secreatry Rumsfeld said yesterday, "the Army retention is going very well. In fact, it's higher for the people who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan than it is for the Army people who have not."

Another funny thing is that I've seen several articles mention that it's actually the strength of the economy in part that's causing the slowdown in recruiting, but that's another story.