Steve Gilliard, Angry Black Liberal IQ Maven

One of the more original voices on the web is Steve Gilliard who runs The News Blog. He's a black guy, hates Bush and all Republicans, but the interesting thing is that he writes more about Armed Forces Qualifying Test issues than anybody else. The military has been giving IQ tests to would-be recruits since 1917 and has an enormous amount of data on how people of different IQs perform on average in various jobs. Yet, almost nobody in the media even knows this exists. But Gilliard does.

Here's his response to Fred Kaplan's "GI Schmo" article in Slate on the rate of new recruits being accepted in "Category IV" (below the 30th percentile in IQ) rising from 1% to 12%:

"Degrading competence" are nice words. " My Lai" isn't so nice.

The soldiers who murdered the residents of My Lai 4 were drafted under Project 100,000. The Americal (23rd) Division was the last division formed in Vietnam and had last call on soldiers. The better units, like the 1st Cav and the Airborne, had their pick of the better recruits. But the Americal was troubled during it's entire stay in Vietnam. Part of that was due to the low caliber of soldier in the the ranks.

What was Project 100,000?

On 10-1-66, McNamara launched P/100000 in response to Pres Johnson's War on Poverty. Under this program, DoD began accepting men, as volunteers or draftees, who would not qualify for military service under previous aptitude and medical standards. The Office of the SecDefense outlined 3 main purposes for the project: > Greater equity in spreading the opportunities and obligations of military service;

> Recognition of the unique capability of the military training establishment to produce fully satisfactory servicemen among culturally disadvantaged men who had previously been deferred;

> Foresighted military manpower planning. The manpower goal of P/100000 was to accept 40,000 men under relaxed standards during the 1st year and 100,000 per year thereafter. Approximately 91% of these "New Standards Men," as they were called, came in under lowered aptitude/education standards, and 9% entered under lowered physical standards (i.e., with readily remediated physical defects). This testimony "focuses only on the L/A group.

Under P/100000, aptitude standards were relaxed, but not eliminated. Men with AFQT scores in CatV [below 10th percentile] were still not eligible. The P/100000 men were a subset of those accessions who had AFQT scores in CatIV [10th to 30th percentile]. That is, some CatIV men who were high school grads were eligible under previous standards, because aptitude requirements are less stringent for grads than for non-grads. In addition, some CatIV non-grads had high enough scores on other tests used for job assignment, such as the Army Qualification Battery, that they also were eligible under preexisting standards. Therefore, not all CatIV accessions were New Standards Men [NSM].

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer