runasim,

Colin Powell attended City College in NYC. If not for the military no one would know his name and his son would not have been chair of the FCC. It has been stated that being a Marine Officer is an easy way to being a corporate officer than going to an Ivy league university.

Some sales pitches are so dumb, they drive ustomers away in droves.

There are many careers that the rich have abandon: Law Enforcement, teaching, nursing, almost all of healthcare, industrial base (running production facilities). The rich seem to limit themselves to jobs in law, finance, the media.

The military is actually one of the best places for blue collar and lower middle class to work themselves into a higher class. The military is an organization were hard working people can move up in the organization. The military gives tuition assistance to people on active duty and is a place where a 25 y/o will be given much more responsibility than in most of the private sector. Most senior NCO have college degrees and even graduate degrees. Many hard working enlistees get a college degree and become officers. It is much easier for an individual from blue collar rural or exurb America to move up in th e military than trying to do it on Wall Street, K Street, or in LA.

Yes, and that's why we try to disintguish between work-for-pay and exploitation..
As i said, I'm still thinking about this, but it's not nearly as clear to me as it is to some others.

It just looks too much like a back door draft, when an economic class of people is targated. It may work out, but then I'm back to thinking about our emerging class system: the warrior class, and the cheap-labor class sustaining the whole pyramid.

The idea used to be that a laborer could work himself out of his class atnd up to a higher level.
Shouldn't the same opportunity be given to the military? How much service time is enough ime to earn an education and upward mobility?

The answer has to be pragmatic, I agree. Pragamtism doesn't require one to act blindly, though, There should be full awareness of what it iis we are doing. I'm just not sure where we are heading,. I wouldn't like it to be cynicism.

There is a maximum that military pay can be increased because Steny Hoyer, Democratic Majority leader will never let the military pay increase be greater than the civl service pay increase.

Also, in reading about the new G.I. Bill it can be interpreted that it will reduce bonuses to fund the new educational opprotunities. If they is what is occuring, it is a very bad idea. Remember, many service members never use their G.I.Bill benefits. Also, universities have a bad habit of just reducing any other financial aid pack by the amount in the G.I. Bill so that it works out being a wash for the veteran.

You should always look for the hidden agenda. Senator Webb represents more civil servants than he does service members. He is getting the civil servants a higher pay increase as part of the Defense funding bill.

Yeah and there is something coercive about work for pay too because they should do it just for the love of country right? Give me a break! Why shouldn't the military be like every other employer out there? When do you get fully vested in your 401? Do you get increasing vacation and bonuses? Why shouldn't the military be at least slightly competitive? I know many people in and who have gotten out and all are proud to have served, but they still had bills and families. It isn't one or the other. It isn't risk death for collage. It's getting help with collage while doing something that you want to do. If this was peace corp offering a tuition package connected to time of service would it be an issue? Of course not because that is something to respect, the military is something people must be bribed and tricked into joining.

I'll prod those deserving of it any time I choose. Pretty ironic words of yours given so much Bush-bashing and other febrile stuff that is correctly deserving of them, instead.

“Just because you don't agree with someone”

Superficial.

My words are chosen for definite purposes. In fact, it's not even so much the factual errors or delusions when I encounter these that move most of my harsher words, not even poor content, but the classless style (and what they may expose, reveal, if not merely imply).

McCain is no Bush clone, not another Bush, and being rabid and truly classless about either man (or about anyone in the way of Obama or another anti-war PC darling candidate on the Dem side) is a legitimate target.

Are we rewarding service with this bill or buying pseudo-patriotism?
i make this FALSE dichotomy only to point out that debating ways and means does tend to divert attention from goals or to move the goalposts.

Back when the Iraq war itself was debated in its beginning stages, the proposition that volunteerism was ttargteed on the economically disadvantaged was met by hoots and hollers. Remember how Kerry was attakced? Experience has changed the picture and the argument by now. Lowering admission standards and increasing bonuses have brought it back into the economic class area.
I wonder, then, at what point does this change into a sublle form of draft, after all.
I know there are exceptions and counter arguments, btw, so don't bother piling on about that.
Still, is there a ever a point whene bribing for reenlistment is not okay? I would think that capping the benefits at the enfd of the first term would settle that question. The person would then have a clear, uncoerced choice. That,, to me, seems llike the least we can do for someone who has allready served his coountry with more at risk than most will ever dream of.

While, again, making allowances for exceptions and nuances, there is something coercive about the benefits-for-reinlistment approach.
If we're to have a volunteer military, then let it be voluntary!

Have some class. Anyone can throw around those kinds of insults. Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean you have to categorically insult the intelligence of a large segment of the US poplulation.

Oh, it was no surprise that Bush was blamed on this site for Benazir Bhutto's assassination — n a t u r a l l y . . .

Anything to see Obama, the anti-warriors' Messiah, win, right? [sigh]

* * *

“How did all of those WWII veterans survive PTSD? Must be some BS disease.”

A major cause of “PTSD” is experiencing killing. If you were to read one book on the subject, “On Killing” by Grossman (he has a Web site, killology.com where you can read more) he describes how in World War II, for example, people traveled home over days to weeks aboard ships, not rapidly home right after combat, and they had time to talk things through, “decompress,” resolve better if at times by no other means than counseling each other the effects of their exposure to killing — not only if they killed other people (which is traumatic) but saw their comrades killed.

The “traumatic stress” is at shock level. Would you rush to disparage a woman's emotional and behavioral debilitation, perhaps with classic “flashback” recollections, weeks, months, or years after being raped?

Personally I think I'd favor a compromise of the two approaches- make the benefits more generous for the one termers (esp to bring the benefits more in line with current costs for college) but only offer the 100% package to reenlistees.

And it's interesting that you brought up the risk of death, because from what I understand the education benefits in the Webb bill aren't transferrable while the alternative bill that Graham floated does allow those benefits to transfer to spouse or child- so in that sense, it actually takes into account the potential sacrifice of life; while there's no way to put a price on that, shouldn't the surviving family members receive the benefit of education? I'm having trouble verifying the facts about that, so correct me with links if I'm wrong (or maybe there's some other existing benefit that kicks into effect in the event of death?)

The question is how will an all volunteer force exist while entitlements are increasing.

The proper word is welfare not entitlement.

But anyways, you fill the ranks of a “volunteer” force by paying them. If free college isn't enough, then you just give them more money.

You're living in some perverse world where we should not educate our people because it threatens the size of our standing army.

In 2005, he voted in favor of an amendment to provide an additional $500 million for veterans' mental health care for each year between 2006 and 2010. McCain voted for the successful passage of H.R. 2528 in 2005, which provided funding for veterans' benefits and service for FY 2006. He voted in favor of an amendment in 2004 (S. Amdt. 3409) proposing a guarantee of funding increases for veterans' health care adjusted for inflation and population increases. Also in 2001, he voted in favor of a yearly increase of $1.718 billion in discretionary funding for veterans' health care, That bastard!!!