Tracy,

If all bings are bongs, that does NOT mean all bongs are bings.

If all uneducated people are soldiers (not that this was ever said), that does not mean all soldiers are uneducated.

Is it true that undereducated/disadvantaged populations are more highly represented in Iraq? I believe it is.

In which case the insult is in the eye of the beholder, not the words of the politician (who still should have known better). It seems his intended message was a modern version of "work hard or you'll end up [something unpleasant here]" but he chose an incredibly gauche example that added nothing to the message. I'm just trying to figure out who this was supposed to appeal to- privileged university students who have always escaped the draft? But there is no draft.

I've just done an internet search- the association between illiteracy and army is well-established to the point that the army runs literacy programs and prides itself on improving the lot of as many as 65% of recruits who society had labelled failures. There are also African American intellectuals writing about the tendency for their undereducated fellows to end up in the army fighting the nation's wars.