Repubs starting to call for draft

[Kaptain L'Merika]

: > >Well, that depends on how you define "young." Anyway, my "draft"
: > >proposal of people over 50 would still, apparently equalize the
: > >disparity between those under 50 and those over! ;-)
: > >Mr. Hegal ...? Are you listening???
: >
: > I too like the idea of drafting the geezers and giving them
: > minimum-wage jobs in armament factories. HAHAHA. If everybody was
: > subject to the draft, there wouldn't be any wars.
: You think so? Frankly, I don't see how that follows. For example,
: everyone is subject to paying tax, does that mean there won't be taxes?
: So far that doesn't seem to have happened. Maybe we haven't waited long
: enough? ;-)
: One thing worth recalling is that even though there was a draft during,
: say, Vietnam, most people didn't dodge it.
: wd
There is a guy over in Talk.Politics.Guns by the name of "Scout" who

argues

just the opposite, that the draft would encourage the government to have
more wars. He feels that if the public dislikes a war then in a volunteer
military they would not join thus starve the military for manpower. But
then he argues, in direct conflict with a body of SCOTUS decisions, that
the 13th amendment forbids mandatory military service.
Also the military could just contract out, as it is doing now. In many
ways, we no longer need the American people.

More likely Uncle Sam realizes that he no longer has this vast reserve of
naive, semiliterate farm boys and slum dwellers like he did before World War
II. Poor- and working-class folks these days are HIP.

[Kaptain L'Merika]

: > >Bush 2 has his own "read my lips".... "Read my lips, no new draft".
: > >Unfortunately, it comes in his second term. Will see how this gets
: > >pinned to Republican presidential candidates in 2008.
: > >
: >
: > Nothing to pin.
: >
: > A draft is impossible.
: since when?
Since we lost over half of our basic training bases during the '90s! We
have no where to train them and even less places to have in garrison
afterwards.

Closed bases can be reopened and if need be, personnel could be housed in
FEMA-style mobile home parks, put together within weeks, complete with
razor-wire-topped cyclone fencing and a guard at the front gate. Right

now

the notion of a draft is a third rail Congress won't dare touch. All that
will change after the next mass terror attack, and Dubya knows it. For all
we know the Feds are aware of an upcoming "dirty bomb" or
chemical/biological attack that will kill tens or hundreds of thousands,

but

the Washingtonian Inner Circle will simply allow it to take place, knowing
that in the hysteria that follows, the "Conscription Act of 2005" or
whatever will sail right through as Congress overreacts. Yeah, go ahead
and laugh. Nobody imagined a "Patriot Act" prior to 9/11 either.

Well, if Uncle Sam expects to get anything out of conscripts, he better
start NOW. OK, if this hypothetical "Concription Act" went into effect
RIGHT NOW, six to eight weeks would have to be allowed for the first
call-ups to get their affairs in order, then there would be eight weeks of
Basic Training, followed by AIT and still more advanced infantry training,
then a 30-day leave prior to the first assignment, then still more training
once in theater. It would be at least a year and more probably eighteen
months before the first draftee became roadside bomb fodder.

At this point it's worth noting that while America instituted a draft in
April, 1917, to provide warm bodies for the war effort, it took many months
to get them together, train them, send them to France and train them still
more before sending them "over the top" for the first time in July, 1918.
That's right, nearly all of the 110,000 American doughboys who died in WWI
were killed in less than four months, most of them in a period of just six
weeks.