Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
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It's also an interesting detail that by what I understand of it not a few of the US ones do it to pay for their future education. (I personally rather prefer a system where the poor have fair chances of getting decent upper education without having to risk their lives in uniform, but...)

Which sort of illustrates one of the issues with straight volunteer/professional militaries, namely the inescapable underlying suspicion of "the poor fighting for the rich". I'm willing to bet the lower ends of the social and income scales are rather proportionally over-represented in the ranks, for the rather simple reason the better off have by far fewer concrete incentives to enroll (and those that do are probably dedicated enough to make it into senior positions relatively quickly if they're not terminally stupid or lazy, and are likely somewhat rare too).

Which, by what I know of US education system, would also suggest rather low average base education level in the military in question.?
Here's some numbers.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Nat...y/cda06-09.cfm
I believe you would lose your bet. Your post reeks of the same elitism that Kerry seems to suffer from. But what do I know, I'm just a dumb Vet.