Monday, January 09, 2006

Dumb soldiers, dumb decisions

It should be obvious that the war in Iraq should be having a negative impact on military recruiting, although one hears via NPR and other sources that the military is meeting its goals (if not the reserves). Well, it appears that one of the ways they've been doing that is by lowering the bar.

This is pretty dumb headed. As the article points out, citing to a Rand study, dumb soldiers don't perform as well as smart soldiers, even with things like aiming guns (which you'd think would be more instinctive than anything else - how otherwise to explain the skills of hunters in the flyover states?).

So not only has Dubya's decision to smite Saddam damaged America's reputation in the world, as well as creating more terrorists than it got rid of, it's now making the American army a weaker, dumber fighting force.

Well done, King George.

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