I don't know the specifics, but I've talked to several parents who are very upset that one of the rules of "no child left behind" requires letting military recruiters on campus.

Just out of curiousity, are you, as a parent, bothered by this?

Also, I'm not trying to make an excuse for Kerry, but the issue of military recruiting has been an issue for the last couple years. I've read several articles that indicated recruiters were now under extreme pressure to meet their goals. Several recruiters admited they taught potential recruits how to hide traits that would normally not permit them to serve on the battlefield.

There was another article that discussed how poorly recruiters who didn't meet their goals were treated by their superiors. In a particular instance, I think it was an office in Arkansas that was managed out of Tx. The recruiters from Ak. were routinely summoned to Tx. to explain their failings for the quarter. Sometimes made to wait many hours in Tx. to speak to someone. Then required to make the drive back to Ak that day.

Some complained that eventually there would be a serious accident from the recruiters making this back and forth drive under severe stress. And, indead someone did die in an accident.

I haven't seen any stats, but these articles did seem to indicate that the quality of the military has suffered due to lowering recruiting standards over the last couple years.



>:o) Interesting analogy John.
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>I've listened to his speech and I do indeed take it as an insult to all soldiers. I have a college degree and I was in the military so I was hardly a failure. He basically stated that if you are a failure in school then you will end up as a soldier in Iraq which implies that all soldiers are failures (your analogy at work). That is not true of all soldiers and he may not have even meant it that way - although I am fairly comfortable with the idea that he did. Now, it could very well have been taken out of context (the clip is short) and that would not surprise me either as that tactic is very typical of the media over here!
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>>This reminds me of one of those IQ test questions-
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>>"If every bing is a bong, then all bongs must be bings. True or False?" ... quite a few people here would apparently answer "true" to that question based on their interpretation of Kerry's sentence ;-)