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Rumsfeld 'Can't Imagine' Revived Military Draft
Comment: When North Korea nukes San Francisco with the weapons that Rumsfeld sold them, just watch people's opinions change. Besides, these bills are not even really geared towards service abroad, they are worded to include a domestic draft, whereby people will be organized into tattle-tale squads to spy on subversives for Homeland.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is expressing steadfast opposition to reviving the military draft despite the stress placed on America's all-volunteer force by large-scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I just can't imagine it," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week when asked under what circumstances it might be necessary to resume the draft.
"As a matter of fact, despite all the talk about the stress on the force, today we still are having very good results with respect to recruiting and retention. And we do not have a problem of attracting and retaining the people we need in the military," Rumsfeld said.
The United States ended the draft in 1973 during the tumult of the Vietnam War era, creating a military whose members signed up willingly.
But recent extraordinary measures by the Pentagon to maintain 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 more in Afghanistan have prompted criticism that the administration is boosting forces by imposing a "back door" draft.
Congress, which must approve a draft, has shown no appetite to revive it during an election year.
Bills introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, a Korean War veteran, in the House of Representatives and Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, a World War II veteran, in the Senate to reinstate the draft have little support.
"A military draft along the lines of what we had during the Vietnam era is, at the moment, politically untenable," said defense analyst Charles Pena of the libertarian Cato Institute.
Neither President Bush nor Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts will "win any votes by saying, 'Let's bring back the draft.' And the same is true for anybody in Congress. It is the surest way to lose votes as opposed to gain votes," he said.
Nonetheless, many Americans are talking about the draft.
The Selective Service System, the agency with which men at age 18 must register for a draft, has been socked with so many e-mails and telephone calls that it posted a statement on its Web site saying "notwithstanding recent stories in the news media and on the Internet, Selective Service is not getting ready to conduct a draft."
'NEVER SAY NEVER'
"Look, we never say never," Selective Service spokesman Dan Amon
said. "But there is no indication, no hint, no whisper at all that
there's going to be anything like a draft."
"It's understandable why rumors are circulating ... because of what's going on in the world," Amon added. "But it doesn't make them any less false."
Brookings Institution analyst Michael O'Hanlon calls the draft "a bad idea."
The all-volunteer force of well-trained, highly skilled men and women is vastly superior to the days of conscription, he said, and it makes no sense "to bring in people who aren't committed, who are just staying for a short time."
The Rangel and Hollings bills would make men and women ages 18-26 eligible for the draft, with almost no exemptions. Those unfit for military service due to health or other impairments would perform community service.
Rangel said a draft would ensure a "more equitable representation of people making sacrifices" in war, while the current system puts minorities and lower-income people, drawn by opportunities the military offers, disproportionately in harm's way.
"For those who say the poor fight better, I say give the rich a chance," Rangel said when he introduced the bill.
Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran, and some other Democrats argue that some steps taken by the Pentagon to prop up troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan amount to a "back door" draft.
The Army this week will begin notifying 5,600 former soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve, a rarely tapped personnel pool, that they are being involuntarily mobilized and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army has also issued "stop-loss" orders prohibiting tens of thousands of soldiers designated to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan from leaving the military if their volunteer service commitment ends during their deployment.
About 40 percent of the U.S. troops in Iraq are reservists summoned from civilian life into active duty.
"If we do over-deploy the Army to the point
where people stop being willing to join, then you have no choice but to
either initially try to lower recruiting standards and get more people in
the military that way, or if things go badly enough actually go to a draft,"
O'Hanlon said.