"Career soldiers solute Bush"

[ivolsky]

A Military Times Poll found that almost 66% of active duty U.S. soldiers approve of Bush's handling of the situation, and 73% believe Washington is ''very'' or ''somewhat likely'' to succeed in Iraq.

• 60% of military respondents said Bush was right to invade Iraq
• 66% agreed or strongly that the military was stretched ''too thin to be effective''
• 75% of respondents opposed a draft, (the quality of service members would decline)
• 63% of men said they believed that Washington was right to invade Iraq
• 42% of women agreed with the invasion

Asked who should be punished for the abuses committed by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib:

• 66% said the officers in direct command of the prison should be targeted
• 21% said punishment should also be handed out against ''higher-level military commanders"
• 12% said ''civilian policymakers at the Pentagon'' should be disciplined
• 10% said no one should be punished at all
• 3% held Bush responsible

Asked who should be held accountable for the shortages of body armor and armored vehicles:

• 60% blamed Congress
• 49% blamed the senior military leadership,
• 35% named the administration

Media coverage of Iraq

• 44% said media had ''somewhat'' or ''very'' unfavorable views of the military
• 37% said the media should not publish stories that suggest the war is not going well and that the military itself should decide whether such articles should be printed or broadcast

The military has long been more conservative than the general public. A recent Washington Post-ABC News public opinion poll found that 56% of the public believe the war was not worth fighting, and only 39% approve Bush's handling of Iraq.

"In releasing the results, the Times stressed that respondents tended to be older, higher in rank and more career-oriented than members of the military as a whole... the survey did not include members of the National Guard or the reserves, those components of the armed forces that have been particularly restive about deployments to Iraq and whose recruitment and retention rates have suffered over the past two years."

Also, the survey featured a disproportionate number of self-identified Republican respondents (so watch out for conservatives in the media to tout these results as "the heart and soul of America" and to criticize the mainstream media for being too liberal and negative in its Iraqi coverage).

more on the breakdown here

[blm]

1. They blame CONGRESS for no armor? Congress PASSED two bills for

military $$$$$ support for the invasion, including for armor, but Bush's Dept. of Defense never put in the order for it while billions of dollars are going unaccounted for. Kerry voted against the 87billion BECAUSE there was no accountability of the administration for the money in the bill, especially for the armor. Kerry was right. Bushies didn't use the money the way they said they would.

WHERE did the money go, George? Your defense industry cronies? Your drugdealing, moneylaundering, international financier friends?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. We called them "lifers" when I was in.

And, it wasn't said with respect for them. Being "Gung Ho" was used as a turn of derision by the non-lifers.

[Tyler Durden]

4. We called any non-pilot officers NFO's...

...It was supposed to mean "Non-Flight Officer" but we said it meant "No Future Outside."

From a sailor who worked for a living and knew both his married parents (the PROPER response to being called "sir" by some brainless e-1: "HEY SAILOR. DON'T YOU KNOW ANOTHER ENLISTED MAN WHEN YOU SEE ONE??? I WORK FOR A LIVING, AND I KNEW BOTH OF MY MARRIED PARENTS SO NO WAY I'M AN OFFICER. )

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. "Eat the Apple, Fuck the Corps"

I was in the Air Wing. Plane captain (certainly not be confused with an officer). A bunch of us were standing in the freezing rain waiting for one of our planes to land so we could fuel it. As he came in for his third pass, we all started to shout "Dive! Dive! You asshole, Dive!".
Uppity pilots didn't get their flight time...funny how their planes got downed because of broken hydraulic lines.

The stories I could tell about "esprit de corps"...especially concerning officers.

[jody]

3. The poll cannot be used to make inferences about the entire military force

because questionnaires were mailed to subscribers of Military Times, see quote at the end. It is highly probable that commissioned officers and senior enlisted personnel are more likely to subscribe than lower ranking enlisted personnel.

Previous studies have found that perhaps 66% plus of officers consider themselves Republicans while perhaps 60% of enlisted personnel consider themselves Democrats or Independent. The ratio of enlisted to officer is so high that the overall effect is for the entire military to be perhaps 33% Republican. Add that fact to the biased sample caused by using subscribers and you have results that cannot be reliable applied to the entire military.

QUOTE
On Nov. 8, we mailed questionnaires to 6,000 people drawn at random from our subscriber list. Recipients were asked to mail their answers to an independent firm that machine-tabulated the results to guarantee anonymity. We stopped processing incoming questionnaires Dec. 20.
About 4,300 of the 6,000 people who received questionnaires turned out to be on active duty. Of those, 1,423 responded, a 33 percent response rate. The margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 2.6 percent.
Those polled differ from the military as a whole in important ways. They tend to be older, higher in rank and more career-oriented. Even so, it is perhaps the most representative independent sample possible because of the inherent challenges in polling servicemen and women, according to polling experts and military sociologists.
UNQUOTE

[LeftCoast]

5. How does one make a President into a solute?

Interesting chemistry test question. :P

[lateo]

9. LOL

You beat me to it...

[MrMonk]

10. It's easy when he dissolves in alcohol.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

6. This is a dupe

[Hello_Kitty]

7. You know, when 60% of Republican, lifer soldiers

Hand-picked for this poll agree with the Iraq invasion, that is nothing to crow about, really. Wonder how many troops deployed over there they asked?

[damntexdem]

8. What solvent did they use?

Well, his federal budgets sure aren't.

[Sara Beverley]

11. If this represents the "best and brightest" we are in deep do do.

It is really frightening to know that these people actually carry weapons legally. Their thinking is very similar to the thinking of the N. Korean military that I am watching on the History Channel right now.

The political leaders of the nations followed by their military are totally responsible for the sorrid state of affairs world-wide. The people of most nations just want to "live and let live" but they are too often misled by their war-mongering leaders who control the military. As far as this goes, we are not much different from Iraq under a Saddam. With the kind of thinking (or non-thinking) of the military expressed here, we could easily become a "well-fed" N. Korea.