You made some good points there, John P. I would agree with most of them.

I'm not sure about military officers making an oath to be "honest", though...

Honest about what? Everything? I bet there has hardly been a single military officer in history who's been honest about absolutely everything....

As for upholding the Constitution...yeah, they swear to do that. The only thing is, though, that what they usually serve in any given moment is the order they just received from some superior officer and he may be violating the Constitution when he gives the order, but that may not be evident to the soldier obeying it (since his knowledge of the Constitution may be quite limited), and anyway, there usually isn't time enough to sit around and mull over whether the order you've just been given is constitutionally valid or not.

One must remember that these military oaths are idealized formal and ceremonial notions which don't always jibe so accurately with the real situation on the ground where people are damn short of time and must act at once upon receiving an order. Most of us are not constitutional lawyers and we're not really equipped to evaluate every situation on that basis.