All Things Conservative points out the results of a new Heritage Foundation study on the demographics of recent military enlistees. Included in that data are some salient points on the education and economic levels of these young volunteers.

Those who have been so quick to suggest that today’s wartime recruits represent lesser quality, lower standards, or lower class should be expected make an airtight case. Instead, they have cited selective evidence, which is balanced by a much clearer set of evidence showing improving troop quality.

Unfortunately many critics are stuck in the echo chamber of the half-truths of the Vietnam era.

Lets take a look at the truth, and not the one according to John Kerry.

"...the mean income for 2004 recruits was $43,122 (in 1999 dollars). For 2005 recruits, it was $43,238 (in 1999 dol­lars)....The national median published in Census 2000 was $41,994....When comparing these wartime recruits (2003– 2005) to the resident population ages 18–24 (as recorded in Census 2000), areas with median household income levels between $35,000 and $79,999 were overrepresented, along with income categories between $85,000 and $94,99..."

And based on the chart below, during the war enlistment from the poorest neighborhoods has dropped, while enlistment of the "rich kids" has risen. So much for the myth of the left....



Over the last 3 years recruits have averaged a 96.8% average High School graduation rate. Meanwhile the general population has limped across the line at 79.8%. Sounds like the uneducated are getting "stuck" in America, not in Iraq.