HEY, WAIT! I keep hearing that it will be minority soldiers who disproportionately die in a “white man’s war for oil,” but here’s more evidence that, well, it’s not that way:

WASHINGTON — The American troops likeliest to fight and die in a war against Iraq are disproportionately white, not black, military statistics show — contradicting a belief widely held since the early days of the Vietnam War.

In a little-publicized trend, black recruits have gravitated toward non-combat jobs that provide marketable skills for post-military careers, while white soldiers are over-represented in front-line combat forces.

The tilt toward white combat troops is recognized by many senior commanders and a small group of scholars who study the military.

“If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites,” says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University in Illinois.

I wonder if the Pentagon will institute an affirmative action program to remedy this disparity.

UPDATE: Here’s a post saying that the claim of disproportionate minority deaths wasn’t even true in Vietnam.