A new version of the Stolen Valor Act, sponsored by Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV), has passed the House of Representatives with a substantial majority of the vote.

Until the economy improves, the folks hoping that a job in the US military will save them from unemployment are finding out that Uncle Sam doesn't want them. Since the military is lowering the amount of soldiers in service after pulling out of Iraq and approaching the end of our time in Afghanistan, the US Army just has too many soldiers. That means that only the best recruits are able to enlist!

From CNN Money's article about recruiting:

A look back at the last 11 years of US military camouflage. Yikes!

The unemployment rate for Post-9/11 veterans fell dramatically in April, from 9.2% in March to 7.5%. The unemployment rate for all veterans also fell from 7.1% to 6.2%.

Although these drops are great news, they may be statistically invalid. The change in Post-9/11 unemployment shows huge gender differences (women dropped from 11.8% in March to 7.2%, while men went from 9.2% unemployment to 7.6%) that may reflect a small sample size of Post-9/11 veteran women, which would skew the sample results.

It's like trying to turn down food at your grandmother's house, it seems.

Senior Army officials have repeatedly turned down more M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, but there is a bipartisan push to spend $436 million on tanks the Army said it doesn't need or want.

The reason, of course, is politics.

Thanks to everyone that entered the Why I Want to Join the Army! contest! This is our first contest and everyone on staff here at Army.com was pleased with the large amount of entries and the compelling reasons mentioned in most of the contest entries.

The five winners of copies of Master the ASVAB are:

The Army's success at recruiting and the budget crunch caused by sequestration have reduced the MOSs that Army is offering enlistment bonuses to only two.

• MOS 09L - interpreter/translator with proficiency in Pashtun-Afghan. Enlistment bonus of $10,000-$40,000 for enlistments of three, four, five or six years.
• MOS35P - cryptologic linguist. Enlistment bonus of $10,000-$40,000 for enlistments of four to six years.

Army.com would like to help five of our visitors make their dream of joining the US Army a reality. Thanks to Peterson's Publishing, we will be giving away five copies of Master the ASVAB!

Earlier this month the Pentagon revealed its new citation for the 21st century, the Distinguished Warfare Medal. This award is intended for drone pilots, offensive cyberwar personnel, and others directly involved in combat operations, but not physically in the combat theater of operations.

At the State of the Union address President Obama announced that this time next year 34,000 more US soldiers will be home - halving the 66,000 US troops in Afghanistan currently.

Although it's unclear how many US soldiers will remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014, currently the US and Afghanistan are negotiating over the size of the residual force that will remain in Afghanistan. According to a senior US official the Afghani forces are leading almost 90% of the operations across the county and by this spring they will be taking the lead, with US forces taking an advisory and training role.