Interesting link Morge.
I had no idea they were turning people away for tatoos (see the bottom of the article - not all tatoos) and Ritalin. A soldier on Ritalin is an alert soldier
It's interesting how they treat the dissenting voice of a sociologist who studies the military by asking "Well, do you have any numbers?" Absurd. Several of those numbers are questionable, and few egg heads are as good at questioning stats than the sociologists and Azreds of the world
For one, people can get into and out of shape pretty quick as far as strength and endurance go. Weight is another matter. I would also question the validity of tossing out so many people the military service aptitude test, as they have historically suffered all of the flaws of all IQ testing [read: not trivial].
As for whether recruiters are trying to blame the pool, and the pool being far from ideal...these aren't mutually exclusive prospects and are quite believable imo. Recruiters are under a lot of pressure and well, we're a rather unhealthy population of neck-tatoo sporting punks.