In reply to:
"good. don't want anyone stupid enough to attend ucsc in the military anyway."

Excuse me, but who's calling who stupid? By which I mean UCSC students aren't the ones getting regularly mangled or killed by roadside bombs in a far away land called Iraq.

Neither did UCSC students actively contribute to the violent deaths of possibly 100,000 people in Iraq. 100 thousand is the approximate number the UK medical journal "the Lancet", in an on the ground independent study, estimates to the be the number of Iraq's killed due to the direct result of the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Most of those turns out were non-combatants, many women and children killed in air strikes by U.S. forces.

Even going with the more conservative death toll figure of 27,000-31,000 currently numbered at iraqbodycount.com that still one heck of a heap of dead people.

Not that most American soldiers are deliberately targeting non-combatants, as the vast majority of the non-combatant killings have indeed been accidental. However such seems small consolation for the dead or for their mourners, after all just about every death represents someone's irreplaceable parent or child.

What America has been most successful in importing to Iraq is not democracy but instead is violent death. As the following report from "the Guardian" states:

"violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, stroke and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion."

All this for a war who's basic justifications their "commander and chief" changes with nearly the same regularity U.S. soldiers under his command continue to run into those road side bomb's.

I think it's wonderful that the students at UCSC drove the recruiters off their campus. Those who oppose violent killing of either non-combatants and the simply young and duped should never make life easy for those who hope to snare the young, influential and often poverty stricken and turn them into virtual grim reapers for the global military industrial complex of the U.S. or any other country.

www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html