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

"The absolute key for the Army is a high-school diploma"


Regardless of the romantic notions about the military we choose to cling to in times of war, the plain truth is... the military, as a social institution, has always been staffed primarily by members of the lower class, and has existed to enforce national strategic and economic interests to the disproportionate benefit of the upper class. The ruling class recruiting soldiers from amongst the poor by arousing specious fears of foreign threats to the homeland, in order to secure power and wealth for themselves is historical banality. But it's ironic that it took a liberal ( traditionally chided by the right for being too pc ), suffering from a sudden attack of honesty, to lay bare an unvarnished if unpleasant truth.
It seems that even a career politician has a limit to how much bullshit he can shovel out in a lifetime. In a brief moment of professional suicide, Sen. Kerry ceased to be a politician and spoke as a man weary of war and disgusted by an administration that dishonors the soldiers every day with a farcical military escapade.
And yes, there are highly educated men and women in the military. But we all know that Kerry wasn't talking about West Point and Anapolis cadets, or the fortunate sons of the Citadel who'll be kept out of harms way until they can come back home to a lucrative civilian career. He was talking about the kids supplying the blood. How many of those kids could even find Iraq on a map when they walked into the recruiting office? Or for that matter, can our commander-in-chief find it?!


...And now I look forward to being labeled an unpatriotic hippy for not wanting kids to die for no reason.