Um, Kathryn, it is not very surprising that, as that Washington Times story reported, armed forces recruits rarely come from the poorest levels of American society. Those levels are largely populated by persons of low intelligence, and the military doesn’t accept recruits of low intelligence. Why not? Because Congress has forbidden it to!

“Congress has stipulated that no recruits can come from the lowest 10 percent of the population distribution of AFQT scores and that only a quarter of recruits can come from the 10th to 30th percentiles (10 U.S.C. 520 and DoD Directive 1145.1). In fact, operational recruiting standards are typically much more stringent than these minimum congressional standards…”

AFQT stands for “Armed Forces Qualification Test.” It is basically an IQ test, though of course no-one is allowed to say so out loud. If you fail to score in the top 70 percent, your chances of being accepted into the armed forces are close to zero.

And that is why the WT can truthfully report that “About 98 percent of all enlistees from 1999 to 2003 had a high school diploma, compared with

75 percent of nonrecruits nationwide.”

Why the WT could not truthfully report the psychometric background to this fact, is a thing you will have to ask them yourself.