A third here, if there is such a thing. I'm military too, and have learned more here in the past 3-4 months than I possibly could anywhere else.

BTW, concur also with the posts above about forums going downhill after political discussions are formally allowed. I've seen several where a rational exchange of differing opinion, while nice to have in that ideal utopic world, is simply not possibly with the heartless and uncaring annonymity of the internet. Even a serious but rational political debate ends up spriralling down to personal insults and attacks which contribute nothing to the discussion but to make everyone involved mad.