Take a look at the guy's website. He didn't just blindly listen to the recruiter. He called the head of personnel for his branch who (apparently lied and) verified the veracity of the memo.

And he had already been stop-lossed before. Why shouldn't he have believed it. In hindsight, now that the recruiter's pitch has been exposed for the fraud it was, it is easy to criticize, but if you have moved on with your life and getting mobilized would screw up your education, what would you do? Sit back and hope for the best, or be proactive and try to remedy the situation as best you could given the circumstances. That's all it looked like the Captain did. Read OTB's other articles on the "scam." There was a significant boost in recruiting after this memo. Are all those people uneducated, or just used to a military ready to screw them at the next turn?

If you have been in the military, it doesn't take much of an education to realize that you get screwed on a daily basis. It's not hard to believe that.

But a year into his IRR service, he said, he was told by a recruiter that if he didnâ??t join the Army Reserves there was a good chance he could be sent to the Middle East.

Very likely this officer has a significantly better education than the recruiter who told him that. If he can't see through the BS, as the lowliest of enlisted soldiers do every day, then he will not make a very good lawyer.

Cut to colonel's office. Colonel is seated at desk.

Colonel: Come in, what do you want?

Private Watkins enters and salutes.

Watkins: I'd like to leave the army please, sir.

Colonel: Good heavens man, why?

Watkins: It's dangerous.

Colonel: What?

Watkins: There are people with guns out there, sir.

Colonel: What?

Watkins: Real guns, sir. Not toy ones, sir. Proper ones, sir. They've all got 'em. All of 'em, sir. And some of 'em have got tanks.

Colonel: Watkins, they are on our side.

Watkins: And grenades, sir. And machine guns, sir. So I'd like to leave, sir, before I get killed, please.

Colonel: Watkins, you've only been in the army a day.

Watkins: I know sir but people get killed, properly dead, sir, no barley cross fingers, sir. A bloke was telling me, if you're in the army and there's a war you have to go and fight.

Colonel: That's true.

Watkins: Well I mean, blimey, I mean if it was a big war somebody could be hurt.

Colonel: Watkins why did you join the army?

Watkins: For the water-skiing and for the travel, sir. And not for the killing, sir. I asked them to put it on my form, sir - no killing.

Colonel: Watkins are you a pacifist?

Watkins: No sir, I'm not a pacifist, sir. I'm a coward.

Colonel: That's a very silly line. Sit down.

As a matter of precedent, the military has the right to keep people in. But that precedent goes to an era when people were being drafted. That time ended 33 years ago.