Mining Micronesia for Canon Fodder

With news like this...
Five GIs Killed by Roadside Bombs in Iraq

Five U.S. soldiers were killed by roadside bombs in two separate incidents in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday.

In the first attack Saturday around 1:40 p.m., a patrol hit a roadside bomb in the southern Dora neighborhood, killing a soldier from Task Force Baghdad, a statement said. Two others were wounded in that incident.

Later that evening, around 11 p.m., four Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in southwestern Baghdad.

....is it any wonder we hear this?
On Farthest U.S. Shores, Iraq Is a Way to a Dream

From Pago Pago in American Samoa to Yap in Micronesia, 4,000 miles to the west, Army recruiters are scouring the Pacific, looking for high school graduates to enlist at a time when the Iraq war is turning off many candidates in the States.

The Army has found fertile ground in the poverty pockets of the Pacific. The per capita income is $8,000 in American Samoa, $12,500 in the Northern Marianas and $21,000 in Guam, all United States territories. In the Marshalls and Micronesia, former trust territories, per capita incomes are about $2,000.

The Army minimum signing bonus is $5,000. Starting pay for a private first class is $17,472. Education benefits can be as much as $70,000.

"You can't beat recruiting here in the Marianas, in Micronesia," said First Sgt. Olympio Magofna, who grew up on Saipan and oversees Pacific recruiting for the Army from his base in Guam. "In the states, they are really hurting," he said. "But over here, I can afford go play golf every other day."

The ghettos of the big cities and the impoverished rural areas of the south can no longer produce the troops needed so the military has moved on to areas where conditions are even worse to find new victims for roadside bombs.