Yes, a very small percentage of soldiers manage to become officers. What's your point? I never claimed that ALL soldiers lack education, or have a relatively low intelligence. I said "most", read the very first post in this thread.

And, in case you lost track of the discussion, I was specifically stating that not EVERY (your word) enlisted person was once a low-ranking private serving as cannon fodder.

Libertine, I like how you pick the replies you can get over on and ignore the ones that point out the error in your thinking.

pitiful really

Would you gentlemen care to take
the Krell test of your intelligence?



- Yes, very much.
- You may be disappointed, Commander.



Suppose we start
with the good doctor.



- What do I do?
- Just sit down there, and I'Il...



Move forward.



There now.



Now, Doctor,
you can read it here.



There's something wrong here.



I have an IQ of ...



yet I don't register
a third what you did.



Now the commander.



It's all right, sir. A commanding
officer doesn't need brains.



Just a good loud voice, huh?



Do I pull this switch
to make an image?



Stop! You'd never survive.



Our Belerephon skipper tried it,
and it was instantly fatal to him.



Oh, I see.
So you're immune to this too?



In my first attempt
at creating an image here...



my brain pattern there
was scarcely any larger than yours.



Afterwards, I lay unconscious
for a day and a night.



Yet you came back
for a second go at it.



It was a question
of science, Doctor...



but you can imagine my joy
when I discovered that the shock...



had permanently doubled
my intellectual capacity.



Otherwise, my researches here
would have come to nothing...



poor as they have been.



Recently I have turned up
some rather puzzling indications...



that in those final days
before their annihilation...



the Krell had been applying
their entire racial energies...



to a new project...



one which they actually
seemed to hope...



might somehow free them
once and for all...



from any dependence
on physical instrumentalities.



A civilization
without instrumentalities?



Incredible.

2hp

You seem to be missing the point. I am not judging them. Many people are dumb, just like many people are fat, many people are ugly, etc. There is nothing wrong with them being dumb.

There is something wrong, though, with them being sent to Iraq, not to "protect their country", but to be forced to risk their lives without any good reason.

Ehm, I already posted 12 times in this thread, 13 times including this post. I am replying to almost everything.

The only point I can think of that I haven't addressed yet is that of soldiers working to be able to go to college.

Indeed, many are. They have to work to be able to pay for college because they weren't able to get scholarships based on academic merit. In other words, they didn't do well enough in high school.

Happy now?

exceptions do not make a rule.

it should get fixed soon

if the military was so wonderful they wouldnt of had to lower the requirements to get in or raise the age where now you can join the army up to 42.

sorry it posted five times

You truely are in your own little world! Do you really believe the horse shit you are shoveling? To insinuate that the only reason someone would need to "work" to to pay for college is because their academic merit was lower then others?...
In the real world (this doesn't include yours) people even the best and brightest can't always get a scholarship to pay their way.

I'm amazed at your twisted logic. You are obviously a very highly intelligent person. I have found most people like you, are called book smart. Which means you lack real world knowledge, street smarts and the most basic common sense. (something our lowly privates over in Iraq have...Guess they are one up on you):321GFY

And Democrats wonder why they keep losing elections.

I'll address your dumbass too!

No one ever said the military was "wonderful"...far from it. The reason the age limits were adjusted is because our gov got us into a war they didn't plan well for. How do you keep troop levels without a draft? You adjust the age limits for the people who want to join the military.

Sorry asshole, you would have never made it through OCS. This fucking knuckle head thinks that just having a degree gets him his butter bars.

You are absolutely right. I am "book smart". That is to say, I am intelligent and have a good education. I do have real world knowledge, though, but it only covers certain parts of the world. The same goes for everyone, of course - nobody knows everything.

Most soldiers have lots of extremely useful skills. These skills, however, in many cases do not include high intelligence (narrowly defined, ie a high IQ) or scholarly aptitude. In other words, they aren't "book smart". Which was my whole point.

That doesn't make them lesser people, obviously. Many are able to do things that I, and perhaps most other "book smart" people, couldn't even dream of doing. Hell, my cousin is a commando who is serving in Afghanistan right now, and in terms of strength, discipline, endurance, willpower, bravery and many, many other things, he is far superior to me. That doesn't make him intelligent or a good student, though.

As for great students getting scholarships... yes, they do get them. Most of the "best and brightest" students have relatively little trouble getting scholarships, have parents who are able to pay for their education, or are able to find relatively easy ways to pay for their education, or at least ways that do not involve getting shipped off to Iraq to get shot at by mad arabs.

Its time for you to shut the fuck up and post some actual citations from recognized third parties about this "low" intelligence level. Otherwise, stop talking out your ass.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_r.../MR818.ch2.pdf
"the probability that an individual enlisted dropped with rising AFQT scores"

The AFQT is not an iq test, but rather the "armed forces qualification test", which, presumably, tests those parts of intelligence and knowledge that are relevant to the armed forces..