Welcome to the forum!
It seems that you have had a pretty bad mauling from some quarters but please don't think that we are all cantankerous, colostomy-swilling, bile-venting old loons who really have nothing more to say than 'the young-uns didn't have that attitude in my day'.
Unfortunately, gone are the days of offering friendly advice and intimating that certain points you raise are likely to count against you during selection. It seems we have adopted a much more Tabliod approach to these type of questions of late and it's a shame.
There are many avenues and each Service has it's own merits, requirements and, ultimately, cadre and ethos that you will have to serve in.
There
is some good advice up there somewhere. Read the threads on AIB / Pongo selection / OASC that were recomended. The long and the short of it is that many who are invited to join up don't have it all in the beginning and develop the rest during training and further on. I once heard it said of the the Royal Navy that it only wanted half-wits as it would supply the other half.
The points about getting shot at are also very sound. There's a lot of lead and other nastys getting very close to us at the moment and for the foreseeable future - you'll have to accept that and long deployments to those areas.
You're right, the Armed forces
are a good employment prospect at the moment but the return of service rules are the stopper if you are hoping to just weather the current storm. Also, if the recruiters even get a sniff that this is what you're up to, then you won't even get through the door.
Best of luck....