Thanks JLB
And now, for a few words from a CONSERVATIVE
online news magazine...NEWSMAX.com
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/6/24/104815.shtml
"U.S. Readies for Draft
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Friday, June 25, 2004
Despite denials that the U.S. plans to
re-institute the draft, the Pentagon has
stepped up preparations for a new Selective
Service System that could allow for a
full-blown draft by next year.
Every few months Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld gets peppered with the nettlesome
question about whether the administration,
straining to keep boots on the ground around
the globe, is considering reviving the
compulsory military service draft – moribund
since 1973. The answer is always an
unqualified “No.”
Story Continues Below
Inquiries by NewsMax – and a persistent host
of others, says the agency – to the
Selective Service System (SSS) about an
impending return to the draft are answered
as well with an explicit canned denial:
“Notwithstanding recent stories in the news
media and on the Internet, Selective Service
is not getting ready to conduct a draft for
the U.S. Armed Forces – either with a
special skills or regular draft.
“Rather, the Agency remains prepared to
manage a draft if and when the President and
the Congress so direct. This responsibility
has been ongoing since 1980 and is nothing
new.
“Further, both the President and the
Secretary of Defense have stated on more
than one occasion that there is no need for
a draft for the War on Terrorism or any
likely contingency, such as Iraq.
“Additionally, the Congress has not acted on
any proposed legislation to reinstate a
draft. Therefore, Selective Service
continues to refine its plans to be prepared
as is required by law, and to register young
men who are ages 18 through 25.”
Is Getting Ready
But savvy draft-watchers, including author,
radio personality and attorney Col. Ron Ray,
USMCR (Ret.), dispute the “is not getting
ready” phrase, suggesting that there is,
indeed, evidence indicating a new,
heightened urgency within the agency, which
these days is independent and no longer
falls under the aegis of the Department of
Defense. Ray himself had served as a
Pentagon official during the Reagan
administration.
For sure, “The Selective Service System’s
Annual Performance Plan for Fiscal Year
2004,” is a document that leaves the careful
reader with anything but the impression of a
sleepy agency drilling for a fire it knows
will never flare.
By early next year, the government will be
test firing a mobilization infrastructure of
56 state headquarters, 442 area offices, and
1,980 local boards.
Funding is in the coffers to kick off a
rigorous “Area Office Prototype Exercise,”
which will “test the activation process from
SSS Lottery input to the issuance of First
Armed Forces Examination Orders.”
Ramping up is the “Selective Service
System’s High School Registrar Program,” a
plan to put volunteer registrars in at least
85 percent of the nation’s high schools – an
increase from 65 percent in 1998.
At the head of the busy-work list – a
no-nonsense commitment to report to the
president by March 31st, 2005 that the
system is ready to roll full steam within 75
days, which would clear the decks for a
first lottery by June 15th, 2005.
Meanwhile, helping the agency to reach its
goals and objectives is a little known
provision of the No Child Left Behind Act
that requires schools to provide contact
information for every student – upon pain of
losing federal aid dollars.
Standby Plans
Alyce Burton, a spokeswoman for the
Selective Service, says that at the request
of the Pentagon, SSS has been developing
standby plans for drafting doctors, nurses
and medical technicians.
Furthermore, SSS has been mulling draft
procedures for other types of specialists –
in particular linguists and computer
programmers. But true to form, Burton is
careful to add the stock denial: “We’ve been
told that a draft of untrained manpower
would not be necessary in the future.”
But that gratuitous disclaimer aside, Col.
Ray, who defended Specialist Michael New,
the U.S. soldier who refused to wear the
U.N. uniform, tells NewsMax regarding the
agency’s heady agenda: “If you were working
for the intelligence service of an enemy
foreign government, all the indicators are
there [for a headlong ramp-up to a draft].”
Ray further points to what he suggests is a
telling February 2004 statement the director
of the Selective Service agency sent to the
Pentagon:
“In line with today’s needs, the Selective
Service System’s structure, programs and
activities should be re-engineered toward
maintaining a national inventory of American
men, and for the first time, women, ages
18-34, with an added focus on individuals
with critical skills.”
Despite SSS’s studious low profile and
careful tidbits promulgated for public
consumption, draft-return rumors recently
abounded on the heels of word that the
Selective Service was racing to fill
vacancies on local draft boards.
Advertisements were appearing in local
newspapers calling for recruits to man the
review panels.
Business As Usual
However, SSS quashed the furor by simply
stating that all was just business as usual:
The longest anyone can serve on a local
draft board is 20 years and most of the
members were appointed in 1980 when
President Jimmy Carter reinstated
registration for the draft.
What appeared to be a frantic exercise was
nothing more than a mundane routine
replacement of warm bodies, soothed the
agency. The canned response by SSS to a
frantic media and public:
“There is NO connection between this
ongoing, routine public outreach to
compensate for natural board attrition and
current international events. Both the
president and the secretary of defense have
stated on several occasions that a draft is
not needed for the war on terrorism,
including Iraq.”
In truth, some experts don’t outright
dismiss the government’s pro forma
dismissals of an untrained manpower draft –
at least for the near term.
At the heart of the matter is the election
year, and selective service is a hot button
issue that neither contestant in November is
raring to push.
A recent CNN-USA TODAY-Gallup Poll indicates
that no less than 80 percent of Americans
are against a return to the draft.
Furthermore, only 17 percent say they
support a draft.
Little Support
It should be noted that just prior to the
Iraq war, support for the draft was at 27
percent. And, finally, a no-brainer: the
poll also found that young people were least
likely to support a draft.
Second in the hit parade of reasons why an
untrained manpower draft is unlikely at this
time is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
When he was a young congressman from
Illinois, Rumsfeld introduced one of the
first bills in Congress to abolish the
draft.
These days the still anti-draft Rumsfeld is
careful not to suggest that draftees are by
their nature second-class soldiers because
they are coerced to serve.
Having taken a hit for just that sentiment
not long ago, the secretary now points to
the more academic of his rationales – high
turnover and a complicated deferment system
that a draft engenders.
Rumsfeld’s most recent pronouncement on the
subject: “I don’t know anyone in the
Executive Branch who thinks it’s appropriate
or necessary to reinstitute the draft.”
Third reason: The Army – albeit experiencing
serious shortfalls of military policemen,
linguists, interrogators, civil affairs
specialists and medics – has ready access to
a handy pool of manpower, the Individual
Ready Reserve, the inactive component of the
military that consists of vets who have
completed their enlistment contracts but
still have time remaining on a total 8-year
commitment. As many as 6,500 could be
recalled to active duty.
Fourth: Stopgap measures by the DoD are
working to keep the outposts manned. “Stop
loss” and “stop move” orders are in effect.
The first bar members of the military from
retiring or resigning. The second extends
overseas assignment involuntarily – as was
the case with the 20,000 troops kept
overtime in Iraq.
Fifth: Troop shortages related to the war in
Iraq and other deployments are being eased
by turning over to civilians jobs now done
by members of the armed forces. Rumsfeld
hopes to reassign to civilian employees jobs
now performed by no less than 300,000
uniformed men and women.
Sixth: Trust that Congress will bail the
armed forces out in time. A cadre of both
Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill
are pushing to permanently increase the size
of the Armed Forces by at least 30,000.
Draft Already Begun?
The inevitable critics of the DoD’s stopgap
measures, however, say that many volunteers
already have served one or more tours of
duty in Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq. “Stop
move” obviously frustrates those who are
ready to be honorably discharged.
Some even suggest that this device amounts
to nothing less than constructive
conscription – a draft. Instead of drafting
the civilian population, the military is
“drafting” the soldiers who already are
enlisted by forcing them to serve longer
than usual.
Col. Ray, who served on a presidential
commission on women in the military, is one
of these skeptics, telling NewsMax, “Stop
loss is nothing less than the beginning of a
draft.”
Such arguments have not gone unheeded.
Just days after the Pentagon extended the
tours of 20,000 troops in Iraq, Sen. Chuck
Hagel, R-Neb., said, “There’s not an
American ... that doesn’t understand what we
are engaged in today and what the prospects
are for the future.”
“Why shouldn’t we ask all of our citizens to
bear some responsibility and pay some
price?” Hagel added, arguing that restoring
the draft would force “our citizens to
understand the intensity and depth of
challenges we face.”
Indeed, a pair of bills was introduced in
Congress last year that would bring back the
military draft.
The Senate version of the legislation,
sponsored by Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C.,
says its purpose is “to provide for the
common defense by requiring that all young
persons in the United States, including
women, perform a period of military service
or a period of civilian service in
furtherance of the national defense and
homeland security, and for other purposes.”
The House of Representatives version of the
bill was sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel,
D-N.Y.
Neither bill is winning a footrace on the
long road to passage. And therein rests the
overriding reason why some experts are not
looking to see the draft revisited any time
soon.
Obstacles to Reinstatement
Congress must pass legislation authorizing
the reinstatement of the draft. It’s not
something that can be done by the Chief
Executive with the stroke of a pen on an
executive order.
If, however, another front appears on the
nation’s already extended battle lines – N.
Korea or Iran, for instance – all bets may
be off. And the preparations underway today
could mean that a draft could be up and
running in just a matter of months.
Col. Ray already sees the writing on the
wall, referring to the writings of former
NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark,
who has suggested that there was and may be
yet afoot a rather ambitious, albeit
clandestine, agenda for American arms,
mentioning war scenarios for Iran, North
Korea and even ostensible ally Saudi Arabia.
Ray wrinkles his brow and rubs his forehead,
mulling over what he sees as a dogging
question: “Why have we kept the numbers of
troops artificially low? We’re half the
combat strength we had in 1991, yet we are
manning 735 bases around the world.”
Ray doesn’t suggest to NewsMax that he has
the answer to the conundrum. Yet he sees the
draft as perhaps an inevitable consequence
of our war on terror."
and those left wing Commies at pbs.org say :
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec04/draft_10-13.html
"Military service in the United States is
strictly voluntary-- men and women serving
in the armed forces do so by choice. But,
during times of war, that can change.
Mandatory service, called conscription but
known popularly as the "draft," allows
governments to require men, and sometimes
women, of a certain age to serve in a
military crisis.
In the United States, the draft has been
used as a tool since the Civil War. In 1940
President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted
the first peacetime draft, which allowed the
government to draft citizens at any time.
"We must and will marshal our great
potential strength to fend off war from our
shores," Roosevelt said as he enacted the
Selective Training and Service Act.
Though controversial, the peacetime draft
remained in place until America pulled out
of Vietnam in 1973. Today, Congress can give
the military the right to draft troops
during wartime.
Current draft concerns
Recently, many Americans have begun to
worry that the shortage of troops caused by
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may lead
President Bush or his successor to reinstate
the draft.
Reading and Discussion Questions
The fears have been compounded by the
numbers. Of the country's 1.4 million active
duty troops, according to a New York Times
report, 655,000 are Army and Marine
personnel, the pool from which troops in
Iraq are drawn. Because the 191,000 troops
currently stationed in Iraq and elsewhere in
the world must be rotated often, military
resources could deteriorate fast.
In addition, both President Bush and his
opponent Senator John Kerry have called for
more troops to help secure peace leading up
to Iraq's first Democratic election in
January. The problem is no one seems to know
where those troops would come from.
The president has proposed pulling troops
out of places like Europe and South Korea.
However the current nuclear crisis with
North Korea could require troops to remain
in the region. Sen. Kerry has said if he's
elected he would expand the Army by 40,000
members but, according to Army National
Guard reports, recruiting levels are already
low.
"We have put ourselves in a position where
we don't have the capability to handle
another major contingency," Sen. Jack Reed
of Rhode Island told the New York Times.
Both President Bush and Senator Kerry have
denied any plans to reinstate a draft,
though many Americans still worry that it
could happen. A recent survey, conducted by
the National Annenberg Election Survey,
found that out of 1,500 adults between the
age of 18 and 29 surveyed, 51 percent
believe that President Bush would bring back
the draft."
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