These wonderful kids have achieved much and are ready to give all - how sad and shallow it is that all you can see is the color of their skin and another chance to deliver a tired old insult.

nooneisabovethelaw ...at least you finally showed your true "colors" and who you are.  This one took me a little longer to figure out.

It's a wonderful achievement to have gotten where these young folks are.  Good luck to them.

How many non-whites even applied??  The thing about the military acadamies, is you have to apply.  You have to meet qualifications.  You have to have a plan when you are a freshman as to how you are going to meet the requirements of a military appointment.  You can't just find yourself in your senior year and think you can get an appointment to an acadamy just because your skin is dark.  Just doesn't work that way.  May work that way in the rest of America, but not when it applies to military commissions.

Marylee wrote, "These wonderful kids have achieved much and are ready to give all - how sad and shallow it is that all you can see is the color of their skin and another chance to deliver a tired old insult. "

Gotta agree with Marylee, in spirit at least.  It'd be nice to acknowledge achievement without expecting affirmative-action results.

Ronmexico wrote, "You can't just find yourself in your senior year and think you can get an appointment to an acadamy just because your skin is dark.  Just doesn't work that way."

Damn, I hate agreeing with this guy, but when you're right, you're right.

Come on. These kids WORKED for what they got. They did not hide behind others. They did not ask for a handout. Any kid, regardless of the color of their skin, could have done the same thing. Their parents instilled a great work ethic in them. That is how you get ahead in America. They are our future leaders. Even though I do not know any of them personally, I am proud of them.

And noone, they will someday gladly give their lives for you to voice your ignorant opinion.

"Damn, I hate agreeing with this guy, but when you're right, you're right." 

H4F... I really like an honest and fair man.  LOL.

Well, gee, you know, them leftists don't want to see kids succeed.

.

But truthfully, I wouldn't advise a military career on *ANY* kid for at least the next two years, until we can get a government that respects and supports the troops.

I meant no disrespect to these seven young people. I'm appalled there are no young people of color in this group. Do they not want to be officers in the military, too?

My point--perhaps poorly stated in the first post--was that these fine young people--and these are fine young people who have worked hard to succeed--are all white kids. Why aren't there any young people of color in this group?

And I'm fully aware, yes, they had to apply, and yes, they've got to have grades, and yes, they've got to have connections to a Congressman to get into any one of the military academies. Socio-economic status does matter, and don't kid yourself it doesn't.

I'm also dismayed that they're all excited. We're going to spend $400,000 apiece to educate these kids to do what, exactly? Take orders from George W. Bush? Fortunately, he'll be long gone by the time they graduate. They just might actually have hope of not getting sent to Iraq.

Good luck to them, indeed. They're going to need it, I fear.

I was taken to task on this blog for inquiring why there were no minorities amongst those going to the service academies. Well, now I know why there weren't...from this link, courtesy of the New York Times:

Iraq War Brings Drop in Black Enlistees

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Joining the Reserve Officer Training Corps was once an attractive choice for people with few options growing up in impoverished, predominantly black East Baltimore. That has all changed, largely because of the war in Iraq.

“Now, it is like, no way,” said Cornelius McMurray, who does outreach with a local church and says the young black people he works with view life in Baltimore as enough of a war. “It is a continuous fight waking up and walking the streets every day.”

In the Bronx, Adeyefa Finch says he simply walks past the recruiters who, seeking out minority members along Fordham Road, make the case that the military can help with college financing and job placement after they serve. “I’m not really into going overseas with guns and fighting other people’s wars,” said Mr. Finch, 18, headed to college this fall to study accounting.

That kind of rejection of military service as an option of young blacks throughout the country has resulted in a sharp drop in black recruitment figures since the war began. Defense Department reports show that the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001, the last year before the invasion of Iraq began to seem inevitable.

And while blacks continue to account for a larger share of the existing troop level than their share of the general population, as has been the case throughout the 34 years of the all-volunteer force, that margin is shrinking.

The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army’s total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period. There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services.

The commander of the Army’s recruitment efforts, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, himself a black graduate of West Point, said there were several reasons for the change, including a healthy job market competing for youths but also African-Americans’ disapproval of the war. General Bostick said parents and educators who had recommended the military in the past might be less inclined to do so today.

In a recent CBS News telephone poll, 83 percent of the blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll numbers show up in the daily hardships of recruiters trained by Sgt. First Class Abdul-Malik Muhammad, based in Birmingham, Ala. “With blacks, there is not really a great support for the war,” Sergeant Muhammad said, recalling one prospective recruit who was told by his parents that they would sever all ties with him if he enlisted.

There were few such warnings half a century ago, when, as a trailblazer in equal opportunity employment, the military offered a chance for education and training. “You could go right off the street and into the military and make something of yourself,” said Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

One vocal opponent of the war, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said, “I still think that in many ways the armed forces is unfortunately one of the few viable options for young people growing up in inner cities who may lack resources for college and have few other opportunities for upward mobility.”

But for others, times have changed. Joining up is not even part of the discussion for high school students who attend Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, said the Rev. Dana Ashton, who works with young people. Students within her congregation go to college.

And Latoya Rawls of Clinton, Md., has decided against the military despite flirting with the idea for some time. Ms. Rawls, a college student who works at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, cites both the danger of serving in Iraq — a peril evident in the wounded soldiers she sees at the hospital — and what she deems the unjust nature of the war.

The severity of the decline has caused the Army to take a close look at how it recruits blacks, General Bostick said, resulting in new marketing campaigns and the use of soldiers who are returned to their home areas to recruit.

In addition, the military has started offering higher enlistment bonuses. The Army met its recruitment goal in July after failing to do so the previous two months, and part of the success has been attributed to a new “quick ship” bonus of $20,000 for those recruits who can report to basic training by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.