"Honestly, a lot of my friends like Iraq. It's not as bad as people say."

Here's a nice story from the NYT about a young woman who joined the Army. It begins:

When she signed up for the Army in 2004, Katherine Jordan had little to say about war. Asked about Iraq at the time, she said she was far more concerned about the rigors of basic training and more focused on the fear that she might wind up here, in her hometown of 1,000, never amounting to much.

The local recruiter made her parents, Byron and Mary, feel comfortable, too, they said. They hoped the conflict in Iraq would fade away by the time their only child finished training, Mr. Jordan said back then, on the same afternoon that his freckle-faced daughter marched across the Lyndon High gymnasium in flip-flops to collect her diploma. "We don't think she is going to be in a battle zone," he said that day.

Reading those first two paragraphs, I felt this was going to be one of these pieces about how the military hoodwinks young innocents, but it isn't at all. Jordan and her parents come across as solid, intelligent individuals who know what they are doing and have good values.

UPDATE: Ranting Profs takes a similar view of the article and attracts a first comment that had me shaking my head and thinking of how to rephrase the famous Kennedy quote. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask who other than you can do something for your country.