I am thinking the same thing. Treat a man like a dog with despicable ROE, lousy leadership, etc, used in both the Bush2 and Obama (ramped up) administrations, and you have a recipe for disaster. Sickening. Would love to see the demographics on those with less than honorable discharges (race, sex, age, legal status).
IMO there's no guarantee that these stats would be important.The Armed Forces have always have *some* bad apples.Don't know if you know this but it wasn't *that* long ago when a lot of guys landed in the military because some municipal judge told them they had the choice of doing 60 days for their minor offense or joining the military.Many such guys chose the recruiting office.
Serving in combat,I'm told,changes a guy...not always for the better.Being *wounded* in combat can be,I suspect,worse.Sustaining a serious head injury might be worse still.And it wouldn't,I suspect,depend on things like race.
But I certainly could be wrong.
I think you have just about hit the nail on the head here. There is a racial disparity in the number of OTH discharges and Obama is laying the groundwork to demand racial parity in OTH discharges. Also, he will make it much easier to upgrade from OTH to honorable, making OTH a less undesirable way to get out of the service.