See

http://www.militaryfreezone.org/justin

Here the author says:
"It's no secret that military recruitment is down, retention is down and U.S. forces are spread paper-thin. The military needs warm bodies. Even with giving military recruiters extra access to students' private records as part of the No Child Left Behind law, kids are not signing up in the numbers needed to fight Bush's war. Today's youths are wising up to the reality that $50,000 for college does them no good if they're killed in Iraq."

Hmmm. "Wising up" to being treated like idiots.

On reading the other side of the story, I would say that Kerry is near correct and it is indeed the Bush Administraton that is treating the kids of America as if they are stupid. Kerry was weak not to stick to his guns and show up the nasty tactics of the US Administration's spin machine.

A lot of these youngsters are lured with promises and conned with the trickery of recuiters and that is truly disrespectful to the youth of America.

The soldiers who are in these warzones for the correct reasons are not stupid (albeit there is a high percentage whose options are limited due to the lack of federal funding for their education)and it is the patronising opportunism from those that jumped on Kerry's remark that suggests a deep and undue disrespect for the ability of the recruits to see through the Bush Administration's political hype.

Those soldieres are flesh and blood - sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers and that is that. That they serve with honour and respect is what matters most. The rest is propaganda.

Despite being opposed to the war as much as you can be, Kerry's comments were stupid and thoughtless.

That being said... if we wanted to catalogue a list of stupid comments from the other side of the camp, I suspect we could find a fair few.

What Kerry said was insensitive to the troops. But otherwise dead right.

FACT: The bulk of US marines are drawn from lower socieo-economic people, among them many blacks and Latinos, most of whom have not had the advantage of good education.

Lacking a career, they resort to the armed services. Are actually coaxed into the armed services.

This is nothing to do with them being dumb.

As said, Kerry should have amplified his off-the-cuff quip, instead of ducking for cover.

Kerry's comment was indeed indiscreet and hurtfull - even to the dummies who so happen to be in the armed forces - and indeed there are some brave noble wise loyal and true etc etec types in hte armed services as well but -

the states has been lowering the bar to keep the cannon fodder at the front line

recruiters have increased the number of "moral waivers" they grant exponentially - allowing in those whose criminal records would other wise excluded them from the services - one expects this to have the effect of diluting the ethical and intellectual pool of the armed services more than some what.

Add to that you have judges who can set conditions linked to sentences - ie no sentence if you sign up

So to that extent Kerry wasnt that far from the truth. Not every marine is a Sgt York ( see classic Gary Cooper flick) or a Dudley Do right as this author suggests-

My experience of the army is "You don't think, I think for you!". You may go into the army intelligent, but they want you to come out as a moron!

No one thinks George Bush intelligent but even he managed to avoid military service. Perhaps it has more to do with wealth than intelligence.

The biggest dishonour done to American servicemen and women was to ask 2000 of them to give their lives up based on a lie.

Why is an aussie discussion site giving a seconds attention to a yank has-been making a gaffe over US soldiers? Bizarre, unless you admit we are no more than a pimple on the US arse.

If the pimple on the Yanks arse gets attacked they will have to defend it.

I second an earlier poster. What the hell is this article doing here? Who cares?

Most likely because there are American students in Australia.

If you watch the tapes of the supposed gaffe, Kerry was not talking about the men in the defence forces, he was having a go at the top of this food chain.

In amazement the Republicans tried to capitalise on it via their controlled media, convincing even some of the Democrats to publically distance themselves from him without consulting him personally as a political team over the negative press.

The democrats including the popular Hilary Clinton, who was elected back in, slammed him.

Mighty fine team of democrats!

Cut throat positioning for power of the top job in their own party even at the expense of one of their own who may be a threat later on down the road.

It is about time the average person voted against this type of political behaviour.

The average citizen needs representatives who are focused on our backyard and not their own individual ones.

Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005
By Tim Kane, Ph.D.
The Heritage Foundation
Center for Data Analysis Report #06-09
October 27, 2006

A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Examples of the voices making this claim range from the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Daily News [1] to Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Some insist that minorities and the underprivileged are over­represented in the military. Others accuse the U.S. Army of accepting unqualified enlistees in a futile attempt to meet its recruiting goals in the midst of an unpopular war.[2]

A report published by The Heritage Foundation in November 2005 examined the issue and could not substantiate any degradation in troop quality by comparing military enlistees in 1999 to those in 2003. It is possible that troop quality did not degrade until after the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, when patriotism was high. A common assumption is that the Army experienced difficulty getting qualified enlistees in 2005 and was subse­quently forced to lower its standards. This report revisits the issue by examining the full recruiting classes for all branches of the U.S. military for every year from 2003 to 2005.

The current findings show that the demo­graphic characteristics of volunteers have contin­ued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality. Quality is a difficult concept to apply to soldiers, or to human beings in any context, and it should be understood here in context. Regardless of the standards used to screen applicants, the average quality of the people accepted into any organiza­tion can be assessed only by using measurable cri­teria, which surely fail to account for intangible characteristics. In the military, it is especially questionable to claim that measurable characteris­tics accurately reflect what really matters: cour­age, honor, integrity, loyalty, and leadership.

Read it all:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm

Check this out. The US are are tricking their own. These recruits are too young to make these kind of choices.

http://www.militaryfreezone.org/recruiters_lie

Jecarey2603, I wonder if crime rates amongst recruits might be a meaningful measure of the standard of recruit. My impression is that the US military is large enough for crime related statistics to be meaningful. Are more recent recruits identified in more or less crime than earlier recruits for the same stage of enlistment? Do similar changes apply to other groupings (if their crime rate is up is it also up for longer serving soldiers - perhaps indicating a decline in moral).

There should be some measurable factors which relate to the values you speak of. Those values may be hard to quantify in an individual but should make a difference statistically with a large group.

R0bert