USAREC works in mysterious ways. The exact legal definition of waiver vs standard vs requirement is complicated and fuzzy. This link from NYT (a fake news sou

USAREC works in mysterious ways. The exact legal definition of waiver vs standard vs requirement is complicated and fuzzy. This link from NYT (a fake news source, but sometimes accidentally factual) gives some insight in that the number of waivers roughly doubled. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html The effect on the army is unclear. Note that even during the surge more than ninety percent of recruits required no waivers. So you can spin the story as the number of recruits with clean records dropped from 98% to 96% which doesn't matter, or its a crisis that the number of troublemakers doubled.