Media Gives Rangel Free Pass

"If there's anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. … If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq."
Chuck Rangel (D)


Charlie can't be bothered with the facts. Like most liberals he believes it when he believes it.

Recruits from wealthy families are actually overrepresented in today’s military. The only income group whose participation in the military is declining is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004 and 13.7 percent in 2005.

Tim Kane, an economist at The Heritage Foundation, wrote recently, “The wealthiest 40 percent of neighborhoods in America are the home of 45.6 percent of 2005 enlistees. For every two U.S. recruits from the poorest neighborhoods, three come from the richest.”

“The average reading level of new soldiers is roughly a full grade level higher” than that of the average civilian, Kane writes. And an impressive 97 percent of enlistees in 2003, 2004 and 2005 were high-school graduates, far ahead of the civilian graduation rate (80 percent). Our volunteers serve because they want to. Rangel’s position seems to boil down to, “I believe this, so it must be true.”