Why might you find this topic on a veterans website??? Because we've all been through it and can attest to the discrepancies between what recruiters tell the potential recruit and what actual military life is all about: Ref. http://www.objector.org/before-you-enlist/recruiter-letter.html (an Army recruiter's conflicts between the Army Times vs. what he is supposed to tell potential recruits). For a few suggestions look over this short 3-page document, The Truth About What Recruiters Promise.doc, or this 19-page document Questions for Military Recruiters - and The Answers They Should Give You.doc. To portray a worst-case, but realistic, idea of what the new recruit might encounter, we have "borrowed" a very well-done resource guide assembled by the Veterans for Peace, Chapter 56 (Humboldt Bay), entitled "Advice From Veterans on Military Service and Recruitment Practices" in (.pdf) format.
We also do whatever we can to assist veterans.

1. Recruiters often lie. According the New York Times, nearly one of five United States Army recruiters was under investigation in 2004 for offenses varying from "threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq." One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany (NY) Times Union, "I've been recruiting for years, and I don't know one recruiter who wasn't dishonest about it. I did it myself."
On the other hand, many recruiters are under a great deal of stress to "produce," i.e., "keep the numbers up," as can be attested to in this very graphic article, in December 2008, 4 recruiter suicides lead to Army investigation.

2. The military contract guarantees nothing and the Department of Defense's own enlistment/re-enlistment document states that in Sec. 9.b. of the current DD Form 4, a ".pdf" copy of the enlistment contract that most recruiters use but don't want you to study too much before you sign.

3. Advertised signing bonuses are bogus. Bonuses are often thought of as gifts, but they're not. They're like loans: If an enlistee leaves the military before his or her agreed term of service, he or she will be forced to repay the bonus. Plus, Army data shows that the top bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of the 47,7272 enlistees who signed up for active duty.

4. The military won't make you financially secure. Military members are no strangers to financial strain: 48 percent report having financial difficulty, approximately 33 percent of homeless men in the United States are veterans, and nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.
Perhaps one of the best measures of the economic impact of joining the military is the analysis of whether a person who enters the military, on average, earns more or less than a comparable non-veteran. In a comprehensive overview of 14 studies which analyzed this question, Stephen R. Barley of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell Univrsiy found that the average post-Vietnam War-era veteran will earn between 11% (Crane and Wise, 1987) and 19% (Rosen and Taubman, 1982) less than non-veterans from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds. According to a 1990 study by Bryant and Wilhite, the average veteran will earn about $2,800 less per year in 2008 dollars (after adjustment for inflation effects) than nonveteran peers. [http://www.objector.org/before-you-enlist/myths.html]
Also, see if your recruiter can tell you how many military pereonnel are currently on food stamps. If he says "None," run, don't just walk, out of that recruiting office.

5. Money for college ($71,424 in the bank?). While the new post-9/11 G.I. Bill offers some promise, if you expect the military to pay for college, better read the fine print. The Montgomery GI Bill was designed for recruitment, not to meet college expenses as the post-WWII G.I. Bill was. Among recruits who sign up for the Montgomery GI Bill, 65 percent receive no money for college, and only 15 percent ever receive a college degree. The maximum Montgomery GI Bill benefit is $37,224, and even this 37K is hard to get: To join, you must first put in a nonrefundable $1,200 deposit that has to be paid to the military during the first year of service. To receive the $37K, you must also be an active-duty member who has completed at least a three-year service agreement and is attending a four-year college full time.
Benefits are significantly lower if you are going to school part-time or attending a two-year college. If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, the military will keep your Montgomery GI Bill deposit and give you nothing. Note: The $71,424 advertised by the Army and $86,000 by the Navy includes benefits from the Amy or Navy College Fund, respectively. Fewer than 10 percent of all recruits earn money from the Army College Fund, which is specifically designed to lure recruits into hard-to-fill positions.

6. Job training. Vice President Dick Cheney once said, "The military is not a social welfare agency; it's not a jobs program." (Of course, this is from someone who exercised all the draft deferments he could to stay out of the military - at the time of the draft - yet has the audacity to call for military deployment and fighting long before all international diplomatic resources have been exhausted!) If you enlist, the military does not have to place you in your chosen career field or give you the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market. (There aren't many jobs for M240 machine-gunners, for those trained to test and maintain nuclear weapons, etc.)

7. War, combat, and your contract. First off, if it's your first time enlisting, you're signing up for eight years (between active and reserve time). On top of that, the military can, without your consent, extend active-duty obligations during times of conflict, "national emergency," or when directed by the president. This means that even if an enlistee has two weeks left on his/ her contract (yes, even Guard/Reserve) or has already served in combat, she/he can still be sent to war. Look closely at the contract, the DD Form 4.
More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have challenged 'stop-loss' measures like these in court so far, but people continue to be shipped off involuntarily. The military has called thousands up from Inactive Ready Reserve (see next Section) -- soldiers who have served, some for as long as a decade, and been discharged. The numbers: twice as many troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan per year as during the Vietnam War. One-third of the troops who have gone to Iraq have gone more than once. The highest rate of first-time deployments belongs to the Marine Corps Reserve: almost 90 percent have fought."
In a quote by retired General Wesley K. Clark, Sunday, December 21, 2008, in the Washington Post: "The military must obey the orders of the commander in chief and follow the chain of command, which means giving up one's own liberties and spending time in difficult and often very dangerous circumstances."

The enlistment contract for active duty military members is actually made up of two separate contracts (a copy of the current 2007 DD-4, typically used by all services and more detailed than the 2001 version), which recruiters do not normally give to you in time for you to actually read through it to see what you are getting into. The first part of the contract you will sign applies to the Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP), which includes the inactive reserves. All active duty members sign this contract and are members of the DEP. However, if you have signed up for the DEP, you need to understand that, before you are actually sworn in and ship out, you can back out of the contract with absolutely minimal consequences. Understand, before you are sworn in, because the Reserve and Guard may swear you in "on the spot," which places you in the military.

• If you're signing up for active duty, the contract most important to you is the one for active duty. Its terms will apply to your situation, and anything not included in that contract will not be honored or enforced. Be VERY careful of Block 8, since, at first glance, 8/a/b/c all apply to the same situation, but they do not!
  
  
• Carefully read the first part of the contract that lists all of your obligations to the military and all of the consequences to you if you do not honor these obligations. A clause of the contract (Section 9.b.) points out that some laws which apply directly to you, including those regarding status, pay, allowances, benefits, responsibilities, etc., may be changed without notice to you. This is allowed under the contract.
  
  
• Grasp the fact that the contract allows for changes in the length of your enlistment in the case of war. Section 10 covers these changes. During the course of your enlistment, if the U.S. goes to war, the military reserves the right to extend your enlistment for however long it deems appropriate (stop loss).
  
  
• Realize that the enlistment contract for first-time members of the military actually applies for a period of eight years. Those eight years can be spent on active duty, in the active Reserves or National Guard or in the inactive reserves. (You can read this in Paragraph 10(a) of the contract.) This Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), sometimes called the Inactive Ready Reserve, is composed of former military personnel who still have time remaining on their enlistment agreements but have returned to civilian life - this includes all retired military personnel!.
  
  Yet, of those of us who are "eligible" to be called up in such "states of emergency," many have found a way to resist. (As of the end of 2008, the Army had about 118,000 personnel in this category, but could not "find" about 40,000.) Download this Courage to Resist Feb 3, '09 [PDF leaflet], Resisting Recall from the Individual Ready Reserve.