The D-word again... Draft.

Lael_Rapier · Oct 10, 2004

Nathan Poe said:
Any thoughts?

Somebody pointed out on another thread that they do this to keep the other side in check... i.e. Democrats will create a bill and shoot it down themselves and all the Republicans that voted against it will be recorded as going against it so that later when one of the Republicans decides to vote FOR a similar bill, it can be thrown back in their face.

I abhor politics just for bull like this. I can't believe they waste our time and money on stupid bull to feed their filthy politician egos instead of serving the country and the people that they took an oath to serve.

I'm voting Libertarian.

MaryS · Oct 10, 2004

Seems too obvious that Hackworth is shilling for the Democrats.

Geesh, an "unknown" recruiter reports having trouble. ANYONE, including Hackworth or a buddy of his could have put that message up at his website.

I've read postings on two other forums of young men saying they went to a
recruiting office and were told they would be put on a waiting list because the
recruiter had more applicants than they could currently put into training.

Every branch of the military has met their 2004 quotas. The army was the last to report meeting their recruiting goal.
http://www.newsenterpriseonline.com/articles/2004/09/28/news/news4.txt (Army says 2004 recruiting goals have been reached)

A reminder quote from Kerry's convention speech, which he basically repeated during the Missouri debate:
"We will add 40,000 active duty troops, not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. We will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists."

About half the troops currently serving overseas are from the reserves or guards, so I could see where Kerry would need to garner more volunteers or resort to a draft if he intends to keep his promise.

Hopefully our soldiers/volunteers are not political partisans about who they serve under because the recent poll of military voters showed them favoring Bush by 4 to 1. An 80% favorability for Bush from the military seems quite
good considering the amount of women and minorities involved, though most
of our soldiers do come from the southern states.

About a month ago I saw a photo on a website of some marines in Iraq holding up a cardboard sign that
read "F**K Michael Moore, VOTE BUSH!"

Nathan Poe · Oct 10, 2004

Key Peninsula Redneck said:
Actually, I do believe that a couple of Democrats voted for it.

I do believe that it was the two democrats who introduced the bill in the first place.

It may be a parlimentary rule that those who introduce a bill are automatically considered in favor of it.

In any case, there is a big gap between "2 Democrats" and "The Democratic Party."

Ave Maria · Oct 10, 2004

I hope we don't get a draft.

Nathan Poe · Oct 10, 2004

MaryS said:
Seems too obvious that Hackworth is shilling for the Democrats.

Geesh, an "unknown" recruiter reports having trouble. ANYONE, including Hackworth or a buddy of his could have put that message up at his website.

Granted, Hack could be lying, although he's always been spot-on in the past.

And Hack's traditionally kept his sources anonymous. The military doesn't take kindly to whistle-blowers. he should know.

I've read postings on two other forums of young men saying they went to a recruiting office and were told they would be put on a waiting list because the recruiter had more applicants than they could currently put into training.

ANYONE, including you or a buddy of yours could have put up that posting.

Every branch of the military has met their 2004 quotas. The army was the last to report meeting their recruiting goal.
http://www.newsenterpriseonline.com/articles/2004/09/28/news/news4.txt (Army says 2004 recruiting goals have been reached)

Well, if the army says it, it must be true. They've certainly never engaged in disinformation before...

I suppose then the Stop-Loss provisions and intimidation tactics (Colorado, anyone? "Re-enlist or we ship you to Iraq") Are just for laughs.

A reminder quote from Kerry's convention speech, which he basically repeated during the Missouri debate:
"We will add 40,000 active duty troops, not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. We will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists."

About half the troops currently serving overseas are from the reserves or guards, so I could see where Kerry would need to garner more volunteers or resort to a draft if he intends to keep his promise.

Bush will have to do the same thing in order to maintain the Iraq occupation.

Of course, he'll insist that there will be no draft. He has to, now that Rumsfeld's gone on record about how worthless draftees are...

Hopefully our soldiers/volunteers are not political partisans about who they serve under because the recent poll of military voters showed them favoring Bush by 4 to 1. An 80% favorability for Bush from the military seems quite good considering the amount of women and minorities involved, though most of our soldiers do come from the southern states.

Then why are they not re-enlisting?

About a month ago I saw a photo on a website of some marines in Iraq holding up a cardboard sign that
read "F**K Michael Moore, VOTE BUSH!"

Good for them. All we need are 40,000 more just like them.
Know where to look?

Glaz · Oct 10, 2004

LOL, Hack a shill for the Democrats....thats a good one.

Agrippa · Oct 10, 2004

Why the draft is, at best, unlikely:

1) Training. It would take years to rebuild the infrastructure to train a large force of conscripts. We currently have the capacity to train 80,000 men a year and reactivating bases will take quite some time. Specialist schools would have to be rebuilt, towns that now surround a number of deactivated/reduced bases will have to be demolished, drill instructors will need to be found, etc. So, a large scale draft won't alleviate manpower issues for over two years. A small draft of a few tens of thousands of men would be feasible, but then other issues come into the mix. (See below)

2) Manpower needs. The current manpower requirements of the army would entail either two divisions or increasing each brigade back to the traditional level of three battalions. The total amount would come to about 40,000 men. Using conscription to find 40,000 people would be inefficient. When we need a half-a-million men, then use the draft.

3) Further inefficiency. Conscription implies a short period of service, usually two years. So, the army will spend $10 billion to create two new divisions while spending millions more to train the soldiers. Two years later, the soldiers all leave. A few may re-enlist, but since your randomly selecting 40,000 people out of the entire 18-25 year old population in the US, the probability of getting people who want to make a career out of the army is small.

4) Rumsfeld's right. Draftees are traditionally worse soldiers than volunteers for the obvious reasons. Many have no desire to be there, others have moral problems with the military. These people seldom enlist of their own free will. Many draftees turn out to be excellent soldiers (ex. Alvin York) but not as many as in a professional force. Quantity is a quality of its own, true, but here we won't have the quantity to make up for the lose in quality.

Yes, there is a need for additional manpower. A draft, however, is the worst way to go about gaining that additional manpower. In the 1980s, we were able to field a force of 19 divisions (equiviliant to 24 today with the reduced size of each division) entirely with volunteers. Maintaining and establishing such a force would require more defense spending and more efficient defense spending.

Nathan Poe · Oct 10, 2004

SoupySayles said:
The European nations are more than capable of handling counter-terrorism on their own. They don't need our troops their to protect them. These nations are targets anyway regardless of our troop status, they are allies of America and guilty by association. Your other points are pretty good though.

Agreed. But then why are we there in the first place? The Cold War is long over.

Nathan Poe · Oct 10, 2004

SoupySayles said:
LOL, Hack a shill for the Democrats....thats a good one.

I got a chuckle out of that one as well. I'm assuming that MaryS simply isn't familiar with hack, and is discrediting him purely out of reflex.

If Hack's shilling for anyone, it's for the troops.

MKalashnikov · Oct 10, 2004

The draft scare is nothing more than a propaganda stunt cooked up by the MTV/Moveon.org crowd in a pathetic attempt to get the mythical "youth vote" to support democrats. They like to leave out the fact that it was the democrats who were pushing this bill in congress.

MKalashnikov · Oct 10, 2004

In other end-of-the year benchmarks:
The Marine Corps, whose amphibious units have fought in Afghanistan and patrol the notorious Anbar Province in Iraq, says it is on track to meet a goal of 36,773 recruits this fiscal year.
The Air Force three months ago exceeded a goal of retaining 55 percent of first-termers, garnering 68 percent. In fact, the branch is 20,000 over its budget-authorized personnel strength and is transferring some airmen to the Army.
Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Stephens attributed the sign-up rate to patriotism, the civilian job market and job satisfaction.
"These are all trends we are seeing," she said.
Edgar Castillo, spokesman for Air Force Recruit Services at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, said the branch actually is slashing accessions from 34,080 this year to 24,000 next year.
"There are people right now that want to join that we can't accommodate," Mr. Castillo said.
The Navy will meet its marker of 39,700 enlisted recruits, as it has for every year in recent memory, except 1998. The branch might miss the goal for 11,000 new naval reservists, partly because active duty retention rates are so high the pool of available recruits is shrinking for certain skills.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040930-122138-5753r.htm

Nathan Poe · Oct 10, 2004

dittomonkey911 said:
The draft scare is nothing more than a propaganda stunt cooked up by the MTV/Moveon.org crowd in a pathetic attempt to get the mythical "youth vote" to support democrats.

Oooo... conspiracy theories! I love those!

They like to leave out the fact that it was the democrats who were pushing this bill in congress.

Gee, if they were pushing it, you'd think they would've voted for it...

Key Peninsula Redneck · Oct 10, 2004

Nathan Poe said:
I do believe that it was the two democrats who introduced the bill in the first place.

It may be a parlimentary rule that those who introduce a bill are automatically considered in favor of it.

In any case, there is a big gap between "2 Democrats" and "The Democratic Party."

I never said anything about the Democratic party, and I'm not the one that stated that all the Democrats voted against it either.

Here's the post:

Nathan Poe said:
Seriously.

2 Democrats instituted a Draft Bill into the House.

ALL the Rebublicans and Democrats voted it down.

Care to guess why?

Nathan Poe · Oct 10, 2004

Key Peninsula Redneck said:
I never said anything about the Democratic party,

What you stated was that a couple of Democrats voted for the bill.
You'd be amazed how many people interpret this (IMHO, clever) political maneuver as "The Democrats want the draft! Be afraid!"

and I'm not the one that stated that all the Democrats voted against it either.

Perhaps you should have.

MaryS · Oct 13, 2004

Nathan Poe said:
I got a chuckle out of that one as well. I'm assuming that MaryS simply isn't familiar with hack, and is discrediting him purely out of reflex.

If Hack's shilling for anyone, it's for the troops.

You're right, I'm not familiar with Hackworth.

After some searching, I have to wonder if Hackworth is going along with the antiwar crowd in hopes that groups such as the 'toledoblade' will overlook his own shady misdeeds.

'Army brass let Hackworth retire despite host of alleged misdeeds'
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040328/SRTIGERFORCE/403280375&SearchID=73186585903008
(note: if you check the other articles at the above site you'll see it is in no way supporting vietnam actions of others either)

Glaz · Oct 13, 2004

MaryS said:
You're right, I'm not familiar with Hackworth.

After some searching, I have to wonder if Hackworth is going along with the antiwar crowd in hopes that groups such as the 'toledoblade' will overlook his own shady misdeeds.

Wow, you did a google search, you got the guy all figured out now.

panterapat · Oct 13, 2004

Several points-

The Democrats sponsored the Draft bill. It was soundly defeated.

The Democrats want a draft so that there will be more pressure from the greater population to get out of Iraq. They want to do in Iraq what they did in Vietnam.

John Kerry's self fufilling prophesy-
If Kerry is elected, there will most likely be a draft, for who would join the military with him as the Commander in Chief????

With Bush re-elected, there will be plenty of proud Americans eager to fight the war on terrorism in the Armed Forces. No draft needed here.

I certainly would not volunteer to fight the "wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time." But in a struggle against the evil of terror- you can count me in.

Thus you have a big difference between Kerry and Bush.

flicka · Oct 13, 2004

It's all political posturing. The way I understood it was that the bill was introduced to scare people in favor of war into realizing that it's might not always be someone else doing the fighting....there really never was a chance of it passing but that dosen't mean it won't be necessary if war is the path we frequently choose.

Brother Christman · Oct 13, 2004

I loathe the idea, but it's hard not to view it as an unfortunate inevitability.

Though I'm a conservative, like many Americans of all political affiliations, I'm mostly fuzzy on exactly why we went into Iraq in the first place, especially since Bin Laden's a Saudi. I think that has at least a little something to do with why so few people are signing up. Try though they might, it's pretty hard to put a Mom-and-apple-pie, it-was-absolutely-necessary-for-God-and-country face on this mess.

As Colin Powell put it, though, we've broken it, so now we own the problem. A pull-out would probably just give the UN/EU more fuel for fanning global flames against us.

the Colonel · Oct 13, 2004

flicka said:
It's all political posturing. The way I understood it was that the bill was introduced to scare people in favor of war into realizing that it's might not always be someone else doing the fighting....there really never was a chance of it passing but that dosen't mean it won't be necessary if war is the path we frequently choose.

Bravo! Well done. I'm glad someone pointed this out. Reps to Flicka.

The D-word again... Draft.

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