West Point grads leaving U.S. Army

(UPI) -- The U.S. Army is struggling to convince recent West Point graduates to make the military their career. Recent graduates of the U.S. Military Academy are exiting active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades, the Boston Globe reported Wednesday. Many military specialists say repeated tours in Iraq are driving out some of the Army's best and brightest young officers.

Of the 903 officers who graduated from West Point in 2001, nearly 46 percent left the service in 2006. More than 54 percent of the 935 graduates in the class of 2000 had left active duty by this January, Army statistics showed.

In most years during the last three decades, between 10 percent and 30 percent of West Point graduates opted out after their mandatory five years of service, the newspaper reported.