Just a quick note on Matt Damon’s mantra about rich people not sending their kids to war. The first excerpt is a breakdown of racial diversity of death in Iraq:

The latest census, of Americans, shows the following distribution of American citizens, by Race:

1. European descent (White) ….. 69.12%
2. Hispanic ……………………..​…… 12.5%3.
3. Black…………………​……………. 12.3%
4. Asian ……………………..​………… 3.7%
5. Native American ……………….. 1.0%
6. Other ……………………..​………. 2.6%

Now… here are the fatalities by Race; over the past three years in Iraqi Freedom:

1. European descent (white) …74.31%
2. Hispanic ……………………..​… 10.74%
3. Black ……………………..​……… 9.67%
4. Asian ……………………..​……. . 1.81%
5. Native American ……………… 1.09%
6. Other ……………………..​……… .33%

You do the Math! These figures don’t lie… but, Media-liars figure then distort these numbers to try and sway public opinion!

(From: 4,000 Combat Deaths)

This is an also from my old blog (also a response to a liberal friend) responding to a Charilie Rangel video (Video Link) about him wanting a draft so more rich kids would be drafted and thusly, the war in Iraq wouldn’t happen (a non-sequitur by the way):

Another piece O’ information Rangel cannot see through the political forest is that most of the volunteers are from affluent neighborhoods, as the following Washington Times (November 8, 2005) article points out:

◆ The Heritage Foundation research paper found that a higher percentage of middle-class and upper-middle-class families have been providing enlistees for the war on Islamic militants since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Researchers matched the ZIP codes of recruits over the past five years with federal government estimates of household incomes in those neighborhoods. Contrary to complaints from some liberal lawmakers and pundits, the data show that the poor are not shouldering the bulk of the military’s need for new soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines. The poorest neighborhoods provided 18 percent of recruits in prewar 1999 and 14.6 percent in 2003. By contrast, areas where household incomes ranged from $30,000 to $200,000 provided more than 85 percent…. About 98 percent of all enlistees from 1999 to 2003 had a high school diploma, compared with 75 percent of nonrecruits nationwide.

Sorry Charlie, your “Bumper-Sticker Slogans” aren’t working out for you to well, at least those who can type into Google the words, “military record number middle-class”, which apparently your staff cannot.

(From: Democrats Calling for the Draft… AGAIN!)

This from the Heritage Foundation:

1. U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
2. Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
3. American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor’s degree.
4. Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.

 …(read more)…

And from the American Forces Press Service,

…. On the socioeconomic side, the military is strongly middle class, Gilroy said. More recruits are drawn from the middle class and fewer are coming from poorer and wealthier families. Recruits from poorer families are actually underrepresented in the military, Gilroy said.

Other trends are that the number of recruits from wealthier families is increasing, and the number of recruits from suburban areas has increased. This also tracks that young men and women from the middle class are serving in the military.

Young men and women from urban areas are not volunteering, Gilroy said. In fact, urban areas provide far fewer recruits as a percentage of the total population than small towns and rural areas.

…(read more)…