Albeit inadvertently.
Not about the educational performance of the troops; he's dead wrong about that. I saw it for myself a few weeks ago we my son graduated from Basic Combat Training. For a bunch of poor, underprivileged, under-educated recruits, their families sure seemed to drive an awful lot of nice cars.
No, the only thing Kerry got right was in his defense of his stupid comment.
This is the classic G.O.P. playbook.
Karl Rove thanks you for your support, Sen. Kerry.
Posted by Rich at October 30, 2006 4:14 PM | TrackBackcoyoteblog.com has posted a graph from a study on this topic. The military doesn't ask how rich a recruit's family was, but they do record his zip code, so the researchers split the zip codes into five groups based on the average income. Recruitment was equal across the four highest-income groups. Recruitment from the lowest-income group is much lower, and going down.
This method does have flaws - like it doesn't distinguish the Kerry's from their live-in help - but it's as good as we can get, and it shows quite well that some of the well to do still send their children into the service. OTOH, the poorest kids are under-represented because they have trouble meeting the minimum requirements. Even the Army no longer wants anyone with a serious criminal record or a severe lack of education.
Posted by: on November 2, 2006 1:54 PM