SOMEBODY WROTE THAT RE-ENLISTMENT RATES were a good metric for how things are going in Iraq. If so, this is good news:

HEIDELBERG, Germany — If Army officials were worried that constant deployments would drive too many soldiers out of uniform, they can rest easy.

As the Army closed out fiscal 2003 at the end of September, so many soldiers had raised their right hands to re-enlist that the service met its retention goals and then some, retaining 106 percent of the soldiers it hoped to keep.

“We needed 51,000 soldiers to re-enlist, and we got 54,151,” said Sgt. Maj. James Vales, a senior retention manager at Army headquarters in Washington.

I don’t know how much to make of this, especially as the story indicates that there are quite a few other factors involved, but it’s certainly a positive development.

UPDATE: Reader Dustin Appel emails:

Further to your post on re-enlistment rates, I wanted to make you aware of something I haven’t seen reported in the media anywhere:

US Army recruiters have told me that all of their slots for Officer Candidate School for FY 04 and 05 are filled, and that they have been overwhelmed with applications. Obviously the Iraq occupation hasn’t affected the number of college grads considering entering the military either.

I haven’t seen anything about this. Anybody got any links?