I doubt that my old BDU’s are going to fit anymore. I need the desert camo pattern anyway; the old forest green pattern won’t work so well.
John Avarosis of AMERICAblog has this piece up on RADAR Online. He wins the “Radical” Russ “Nail on Head” award for the day:
Does anybody else feel a draft coming on?
The late colonel David Hackworth, the most decorated U.S. soldier of the Vietnam War, wrote in an article last October that “the draft — which will include both boys and girls this time around — is a no-brainer in ’05 and ’06.” Even Republican senator Chuck Hagel warned last year that a draft “might become necessary” in the years ahead.
The Bush administration, for its part, says categorically that there will be no draft. The Selective Service website includes a big notice on its home page reminding visitors that the House of Representatives voted last fall against reinstating the draft, and that both the president and Rumsfeld are against it.
That’s all well and good, but the House vote took place only one month before last fall’s election. A recent AP-Ipsos poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose bringing back the draft, more than half would discourage their sons from enlisting, and two-thirds would discourage their daughters. Those congressmen weren’t so much voting against the draft as they were voting to keep their jobs. More importantly, that vote does nothing to eliminate the growing recruitment problem that could eventually force a draft upon us.
As for Bush and Rummy, keep in mind that they’re the guys who told us they had no plans to invade Iraq (they did), that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (there weren’t), that the invasion and occupation would be a cakewalk (it hasn’t been), that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers (they didn’t), that the mission was “accomplished” two years ago (it wasn’t), that 160,000 new Iraqi security forces are fully trained and ready to take over for U.S. troops (they aren’t), and that our coalition of allies remains strong (it doesn’t).
Even more to the point, although the Bush administration may be promising publicly that there will be no draft, privately they’ve been planning one for more than a year. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last year that the Selective Service secretly asked for the authority to increase the draft age to 34 and to include women. (Mind you, they suddenly need this added authority for a draft they assure us will never occur.)
But it won’t be enough to just draft a bunch of grunts. The Post-Intelligencer also reported that “Selective Service planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts began last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas.” And the New York Times reported that in 2004 that the Selective Service updated its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers and paid an outside consultant to figure out how to implement such a draft and how to sell it to the public.
That sure is a lot of prep work for something no one’s considering doing.
Gosh, I guess this former military guy with considerable computer expertise and his wife who’s a licensed health care worker should really really start getting their passports in order and investigating work visa opportunities in British Columbia.
