didn't think so.
Not questioning your service or integrity, just don't come here and spout something you cannot back up. If you can then I will apologize. But until then, show me the numbers.
Here, let me help you out....
http://silverchips.mbhs.edu/inside.php?sid=4287An even more frightening disparity is evident in the ranks of the military: According to the Department of Defense, enlistees, who account for 86 percent of the active military service, come from consistently lower-income backgrounds than their officers. The recruits who take the most risk are inherently those with the least voice. Marines Sergeant Edwin Scott, a recruiter at Blair as well as the wealthier Bethesda-Chevy Chase (B-CC) and Whitman, says that he has come to expect that the recruits from B-CC and Whitman will consist almost entirely of commissioned officers. Still, recruiters continue to push commissioned officer programs at already privileged schools; across the county at Richard Montgomery, where students are slightly over half as likely to receive FARMs as Blazers, recruiters provide the Career Center with brochures almost exclusively advertising the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and officer academies.
Oh, and there is this little tidbit:
Table 1. Proportion of Qualified and Available Males Required Annually for Military Service, Fiscal Years 1984-88
Thousands unless otherwise indicated
Item 1984-88 Total non-institutionalized 18-year-old males a 1,800 Minus: non-available college students (adjusted for dropouts) b 525 Minus: Unqualified males 526 Mental c 337 Physical or moral d 189 Equals: Qualified and available male pool 729 Total male recruit requirement 376 Active forces 278 Reserve forces 98 Percent of pool required 52
Sources: Total 18-year-old male population from Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, series P-25, no. 704, "Projections of the Population of the United States: 1977 to 2050" (GPO, 1977), pp. 4448, 51-55. Institutionalized population estimates based on preliminary data from the 1980 census provided by Bureau of the Census. First- and second-year dropouts based on estimates provided by National Center for Educational Statistics. Mentally unqualified derived from data contained in special tabulations provided by Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Logistics. Physically and morally unqualified derived from unpublished data provided by Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Logistics. Male recruitment requirements compiled from Department of Defense, Manpower Requirements Report, FY 1984, vol. 3: Force Readiness Report (DOD, 1983), pp. III-12, 111-20,111-21, IV-10, V-7, VI-6, VI-9, VI-10. Projections of Navy and Marine Corps reserve requirements based on fiscal 1983 recruitment data.
a. Assumes 1.5 percent of the male population aged 18 to 24 is institutionalized.
b. Estimates based on 1980 participation rates: in 1980, 74.4 percent of the youth cohort that had entered the ninth grade in 1972 completed high school and 46.3 percent of the initial group enrolled as full- or part-time students in programs creditable toward a bachelor's degree. Assumes that 25 percent of first-time enrollees leave during the first year and 12.5 percent during the second year.
c. Based on 1981 military aptitude requirements, 2 percent of males with one or more years of college would be expected to be unqualified, 10 percent of high school graduates without college experience would not meet minimum standards, and 60 percent of non-high school graduates would not qualify.
d. Assumes that 16.3 percent of the male youth population meeting minimum aptitude requirements would be disqualified on physical grounds and 3.9 percent would fail to meet moral standards.
http://www.npg.org/forum_series/manning_military.htmIt took me about a minute to come up with this...can you refute it?