February 21, 2008
West Point Disputes Attrition Rate In FP Report
On Tuesday, we wrote about a Foreign Policy magazine and Center for a New American Security [PDF] survey of active-duty and retired military officers that found growing concern about the strength of America's armed forces. We attributed the following statistic to FP's report on the survey:
According to Foreign Policy, nearly 60 percent of the West Point class of 2002 left active duty at their first chance to opt out, in 2007.
The United States Military Academy, better known as West Point, disputes that figure, calling it: "Hogwash. Gibberish. Misinformation."
Spokesman Col. Bryan Hilferty continued, "Actually, only 40 percent of the class of 2002 has left active duty. And the implication that this is an alarmingly high number is also false. The attrition of the class of 2002 is just at the 10 year average and lower than the classes of 2001 and 2000."
Hilferty gave us credit for actually attributing the statement, which he says is being widely repeated without grounding in other publications. He attempted to extract a correction from FP, but to no avail.
"[I] believe they are just repeating a widely repeated 'fact' that somehow entered the national conversation and now is taken as true," he said.
We also made several requests for FP's data and were told yesterday we would hear from editor Mike Boyer. We haven't yet, after several follow-up calls, and in fairness to West Point are going up with their protest. If we hear from FP, we'll go up with that, too.
