On Monday, speaking before students at Pasadena City College, John Kerry said this:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Everybody in the mainstream media jumped on it like a pack of rabid dogs. FoxNews, Drudge, CNN, Limbaugh, O’Reilly… also Bush, Cheney, Malkin, Coulter, and practially everyone else in the blogosphere. It’s Thursday, and they are still feeding on the barely visible remains of Kerry’s corpse. They’ll probably continue to do so until November 7th. Lots of people talk about how horrible Kerry is and how we must support the troops and how this is typical of the Democrat party… lots of pundits speculating about the effects this will have on the election.

Folks, if you change your vote based on something a washed-out incompetent hack politician says, then we deserve every bit of pain our government can dish out on us.

I would first remind those who like to link the entire Democratic party with the offhand comments of some guy who lost the election two years ago, that such thinking can open doors the Republicans would rather see locked. After all, after Mark Foley, should I now assume that every Republican likes young boys?

What’s pathetic about this whole election is that people love gossip and slander but would rather not discuss any important issues, like taxes, our economy, and the so-called War on Terrorism (TM). Hey, God forbid that people should blast Kerry for his comments without even addressing them directly. Like, you know - the idea that perhaps he is correct?

Let’s get something out of the way first: he was talking about troops, not Bush. If you think he was talking about Bush, stop reading right now - you are deluded and I can’t help you.

Secondly, you should read the following links:

It’s not Kerry who dishonors the troops - a blog by Diana Rowe Pauls with many footnotes backing her up

According to the U.S. Army Recruiting Command’s Strategic Partnership Plan for 2002-2007, “Priority areas [for recruitment] are designated primarily as the cross section of weak labor opportunities and college-age population as determined by both [the] general and Hispanic population.”

…Kurt Gilroy who directs recruiting policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, noting that it is important to “maximize return on the recruiting dollar [because] the advertising and marketing research people tell us to go where the low-hanging fruit is. In other words, we fish where the fish are.”

US lowers standards in Army numbers crisis - 2005 Guardian article

The US military has stopped battalion commanders from dismissing new recruits for drug abuse, alcohol, poor fitness and pregnancy in an attempt to halt the rising attrition rate in an army under growing strain as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Recruiters have been given greater leeway,” said Mr Pike. “By doing things to increase quantity you are also doing things to decrease quality, but they have made the judgment that that is the way to go.”

What’s that? Gangs infiltrating the US military? (multiple articles on the subject). See this one from SFGate:

In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the Army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of “recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records.” In fact, as the military’s own data indicated, “the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001.”

One beneficiary of the Army’s new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been “a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder.”

GI Schmo - How low can Army recruiters go? - From a January 2006 Slate article

Faced with repeated failures to meet its recruitment targets, the Army has had to lower its standards dramatically. First it relaxed restrictions against high-school drop-outs. Then it started letting in more applicants who score in the lowest third on the armed forces aptitude test—a group, known as Category IV recruits, who have been kept to exceedingly small numbers, as a matter of firm policy, for the past 20 years.

In response to the tightening trends, on Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year’s recruits to be Category IV applicants—up from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s. Even so, in October, the Army had such a hard time filling its slots that the floodgates had to be opened; 12 percent of that month’s active-duty recruits were Category IV. November was another disastrous month; Army officials won’t even say how many Cat IV applicants they took in, except to acknowledge that the percentage was in “double digits.”

Now granted, some perspective is needed:

Each year the Army recruits 80,000 new troops—which amount to 16 percent of its 500,000 active-duty soldiers. Even if 12 percent of recruits were Category IV, not just for October but for the entire coming year, they would swell the ranks of Cat IV soldiers overall by just 1.9 percent (0.12 x 0.16 = .0192).

Bush thinks the troops are “plenty smart”. And for the most part, they are. I have worked with a lot of intelligent guys in the military - much smarter than I am. But it should be noted that there is some truth in what Kerry said. And if people in today’s America weren’t so consumed by political correctness, perhaps we would learn to apply reason when we debate topics. But bread and circuses are more fun, aren’t they?

Of course, you’ll never hear a neo-con speak bad of the troops. It’s not a good idea to speak negatively of the guys you send to war. Can you imagine being on the front line and hearing what Bush/Cheney really thinks of you?

~Invasive