The author seems clueless about the big picture. The amounts of money involved are tiny, less than twenty cents per member of the active military, and hence the data are easily skewed by a few donations. His lack of knowledge is given away by the quote “When the turn to a voluntary military came, the military became less representative of the country as a whole. A disproportionate part of the military was drawn from rural and economically disadvantaged areas which have usually been more Republican. ”, when in fact the volunteer military comes from families with slightly above average incomes.

The article, while informative, fails to address a growing phenomenon that has been brewing rather fiercely in the active military and in the military academies, most notably the Air force Academy which is located in a major US center of fundamentalist religious fanaticism, Colorado Spings. One recent news item reports that a group of commanding officers working with a religious promotional organization in Iraq , with the blessing of the Pentagon, have been distributing religious literature and, for example, "informing" ground troops about the political and social positions of visiting members of the Congress, among a number of other quasi-illegal activities. These efforts continue apace - - in part, at the expense of tax ... More »

another tendentious story. "news" should, ideally, be reportage on current events. but most of what is posted here on NewsTrust is commentary. and the latter is already exhaustively available in newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. pro and anti commentary may be "balanced" but it is not news. journalists may be surprised to learn that readers can form their own opinions about events and do not need help from the commentariat.