I won't argue that there isn't cross-pollination between NASA and the military, but if you're looking for a test pilot for your new, high-performance aircraft (or, say, rocket), you'd be hard pressed to find a more qualified candidate than a military test pilot.

That reasoning was used for years to exclude women from the astronaut programme, even when women outperformed men in NASA's own test pilot tests.

(Astronauts were drawn from the test pilot pool. Women could not become test pilots because test pilots were military pilots, and military pilots were not female.)

http://history.nasa.gov/printFriendly/flats.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13

From the Nazi V-2 team to the US X-37 there is a long history of considerable inter-connectivity.

Not just people but technology, manufacturing & testing methods, etc. It's a more significant than cross-pollination to me.

Serious question, would anyone else have been more qualified for those positions?

He picked a bad example, because honestly you are right.

A better example might be how the DoD influenced/compromised the design of the Space Shuttle. The only reason it had those big-ass wings was so that it could fly polar orbit missions for the military. It never actually flew any of those missions, but it did fly a few classified military missions: STS-51-C, STS-51-J, STS-27, STS-28, STS-33, STS-36, STS-38, and a few others.