AWOL doen't equal Desertion
Did anyone else note the article's conflation of desertion with being AWOL. Last time I checked the UCMJ and Manual for Courts Martial, these two offenses are quite different especially as to the severity of their maximum punishments.
Based on my experience leading troops in the Army of the 70s and 80s, an AWOL rate of 0.7% or 0.9% per year quite low.
IMO, an even better indicator of troops' issues with the war might be a count of those charged for missing movement as part of an OCONUS deployment.
Of course I'd like to see a lot of other demographic information--time in service, marital status, enlistment category, MOS, component (AC/RC), among others. Right now, all I get from this report is another attempt at a "sensational" sound bite by a media that doesn't really understand what it is reporting.