I had a guy that came in as an E4 with a masters degree in Chemistry who joined the army to pay off his student loans. Very book smart guy but as a soldier almost worthless.

Soldiers need to be judged on a case by case basis and making grand proclamations that soldiers with GEDs are poor recruits is not fair to them and they should be given every opportunity to succeed until they prove otherwise.

“Just wait for this recession to kick in”

Forget recession… let’s go for a full-fledged depression (without the fallback of a 1930s agrarian economy)… and we can get some PhDs begging to flip eggs in the DFAC. Then, we can get out of it with a good paradigm-changing world war… kinda like WWII bringing about the end of the last depression. I’m sure we can find a reason in the Gulf of Tonkin… er… Strait of Hormuz to kick one off if the dollar drops too low.

Sadly, there may be a little too much truth to these statements.

“Plus it seems a bit snobby to say someone should not be given the opportunity to serve their country because they have a GED. If they can’t cut it when they get in it easy enough to chapter them out.”

The first half is right… the second is part of the problem.

Back In the Day, screw-ups, slackers and misfortunates made their way into the Army where they were forced to perform, accept training and develop skills and abilities to make them successful (or functional) in society. Many found their inner potential after a few sessions of wall-to-wall.

Now, recruiters will take any lost cause with a heartbeat (even if it requires fibbing). They get sent off to a kind and gentle, watered-down basic where many are coddled into finishing to keep the numbers up… with the expectation that any non-hackers will be straightened up when they get to their unit. Wrong.

Once there, after lots of expensive feeding, housing and training, the idiots aren’t forced into getting on the program but are paperworked to death for each screw-up. Once enough of that builds up, it becomes “easy enough to chapter them out.” Problem solved.

But it isn’t solved. We have jails full of unsolved problems.

Despite my snarky-ness, there really isn’t any problem with non-graduates going into the military (or even petty criminals or former pot smokers). The military is (should be) a fantastic place for young people who got off to a bad start in life to get pointed in the right direction… even if it has to be forced on them.

These days, the Army is letting a lot of losers in and it isn’t forcing them to become winners. Chaptering them out is an easy fix for poor leadership.

Additionally the jobs the lower scoring ASVAB types are eligible for do not necessarily require a whole lot of brain power like flipping eggs in the DFAC.

“Moral waiver?”

I see now. That “all Army recruits MUST have a high school diploma” policy doesn’t exactly mean “all”, “must”, “have”, “high school” or “diploma”.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080122/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_recruiting

I bet there is some kind of scientific-ie correlation between not graduating from high school with the rest of your class and being a poor-decision-making dumbarse.

This is a total fabrication.

If you think this is anti-korean, than you are admitting that you have been anti-korean on that cases.
Am’I right or Wrong? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Oh … you also say “ingrate people, look at what they are doing … despite of all the things we have done for them …. let’s pull the GIs out”.