I’m furious with Kerry over his quote about studying hard or ending up in Iraq.

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

It’s rude. It’s wrong. Those who have gone to Iraq, who are in Iraq, and who will continue to go to Iraq are volunteers. Many of them are volunteers who knew beforehand that they would be going somewhere in the Middle East. Many of them are volunteers who signed back up while overseas. They’re not uneducated boobs who couldn’t stay in school.

Don’t knock our service men and women.

But I do know that one of my students got a full-ride scholarship to college, partied, lost his scholarship, and went into the Army. Sure enough, he’s just back from Iraq.

But it wasn’t because he wasn’t smart. Just that he didn’t study and stay in school.

Lots of folks did, though. Including my friends’ kids. Who are in the service. And whose parents are probably up in arms over Kerry’s stupidity.

Michelle Malkin wrote:

9.9 percent of the enlisted force have at least a high school education; 73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree; 16.2 percent have an associate’s degree or equivalent semester hours; 4.7 percent have a bachelor’s degree; 0.7 percent have a master’s degree and .01 percent have a professional or doctorate degree.”

That comes from http://www.af.mil/news/story_print.asp?storyID=123027385 (about a third of the way down).