What type of person resorts to questioning a cheating scandal in the seventies as a means to undermine the fact that West Pointers are leading the war on terror? If anything, the cheating scandal emphasized that integrity was paramount at West Point where they proceeded to ship a bunch of the Corps off to civilian colleges. ROTC students don't have an honor code to deal with.

So....what does this say about your thesis that a West Point education is as valuable as the local community college?

Well, there's plenty of other things to quantify. For example, the Ranger School graduation rates of Infantry Lieutenants. Historically:
OCS 33%
ROTC 70%
USMA 85%

Not to mention the fact that West Point cadets have won far more Rhodes and Marshall scholarships than ROTC cadets. The "community college" idea really doesn't hold much water. Most ROTC LTs I meet don't even know that grad school is something that officers do. One told me over 50% of ROTC students major in criminal justice. In my platoon in the Infantry Officer Basic Course that was true. (If anyone has data on this, post it. I do know someone who does, but he won't disclose it because he knows I'm commenting on this issue...)

Believe me, having spent my first year out of West Point in the UK on a scholarship, I think civilian education should be priority #1 for the Officer Corps. The problem is most of the anti-intellectualism I find comes from OCS and ROTC (a little more from OCS). West Pointers, having seen academics and the Army at once, view grad school as something we all will do. Also, let's not forget: ROTC at the top tier institutions is all but dead. I think I've met maybe 2 officers from Ivy League schools.... and that's after racking my brain for recollections. Getting rid of West Point won't help the Army in terms of civilian education. West Point is essentially the last bastion of good undergraduate education (key word here being "undergraduate") that the Army has.

Oh, just the economist in me talking, but while the average cost of West Point is higher, its marginal cost is actually slightly lower than ROTC. Sorry, don't have the PDF on this at Ft Benning, will try to locate later.

All this from someone who took two books on the flight to Cambridge last year: FM 7-8 and Fiasco.

So what was the deal on McKiernan's dismissal, anyway?

I can see it being sold in Afghanistan as a response to recent errant air strikes, giving Karzai something he can say he got the Americans to do. That may even have been a factor, though probably not the main one. Other issues might be relations with NATO allies having troops in Afghanistan; policy toward the Afghan drug trade; operations inside Pakistan; or just the personal relationship between Gen. Petraeus and his former senior, McKiernan.

If we're talking about a major strategic shift that either Petraeus, or Sec. Gates, or President Obama (or some combination of the three) thought Gen. McChrystal could implement better than McKiernan, their thinking has yet to receive a clear public explanation. In perfect fairness to President Bush, it was clearer when Gen. Casey got elevated out of Iraq what the reasoning was -- Bush said very plainly he'd committed to a new course (the surge, and its attendant adjustments in tactics) that Casey was known to have opposed.