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Thread: A Co-ed draft may very well be in the works.

  1. A Co-ed draft may very well be in the works.

    From Radarmagazine, take it as you will but it doesn't sound good. "Read my lips, no new draft"? And they are so stretched that they can't dismiss female soldiers now for pregnancy? Ha. WOW.

    The Pentagon is desperately trying to stop the hemorrhaging. The army lowered its academic standards last fall, and, just last month, the Wall Street Journal wrote that “To keep more soldiers in the service, the Army has told battalion commanders, who typically command 800-soldier units, that they can no longer bounce soldiers from the service for poor fitness, pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse or generally unsatisfactory performance.”

    Just what we need: an army of Federlines.

    The military’s recruiting problems shouldn’t come as a surprise. The mayhem in Iraq continues to grow while Afghanistan is playing catch-up, fast. According to the nonpartisan factcheck.org, “By most measures the violence [in Iraq] is getting worse. Both April and May were record months in Iraq for car bombings…with more than 135 of them being set off each month.” In Afghanistan, the Taliban-orchestrated violence has gotten so bad that it has left “much of Afghanistan off-limits to aid workers and has reinforced concerns that the war here is escalating into a conflict on the scale of that in Iraq,” according to the Associated Press. Potential recruits may be young, but they’re not stupid.

    Adding to the crisis, there are rumblings that more U.S. troops are needed. Democratic senator Joe Biden recently returned from Iraq, where, he says, American generals told him they need more troops. Republican senator John McCain agrees. But where will we get more troops when recruitment is down, our current supply of soldiers is getting killed or wounded, and Donald Rumsfeld now admits that we could be in Iraq for 10 to 15 years?

    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.

  2. Looks like a left-leaning magazine so it's probably a scare tactic.

  3. If it's true the U.S. will being Iraq for at least ten more years though...that is a long time with no major influx of extra troops. But maybe it's a scare tactic as you say since Bush did say there'd be troop "dropdowns" starting in 2006. Who knows. A draft is bad enough but that would make me really angry if they tried to force women to go to war though.

  4. Quote Originally Posted by Mike
    Looks like a left-leaning magazine so it's probably a scare tactic.
    Yeah. Besides the authorization, if there were some more signs, I'd believe it.
    ...and go live with my relatives in Ireland.

  5. A draft is bad enough but that would make me really angry if they tried to force women to go to war though.
    Why? Aren't women supposed to be equal in this society? Stop being sexist.

  6. NOT THIS AGAIN!! - Tizoc
    Time for a change

  7. Quote Originally Posted by diffusionx
    Why? Aren't women supposed to be equal in this society? Stop being sexist.

  8. There is no solid evidence backing up the argument of the draft, they just voted on it last year and it failed horribly. What makes you think all of those politicians are going to have a drastic change of mind so soon?
    http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/image.php?type=sigpic&userid=1739&dateline=1225393453

  9. Quote Originally Posted by Dylan1CC
    Im being fucking serious here - women are supposed to be the equal to men in this society, and they shouldnt be excluded from ANYTHING just because theyre women. This is a simple fact. ANYTHING includes military service. Give me one reason why women should not be drafted in our supposedly-equal society.
    Last edited by diffusionx; 19 Jul 2005 at 02:40 PM.

  10. Diff's got a point but in reality, every single girl I know under 35 would be pissed beyond reason (well in this case maybe appropriatly pissed) if they were potential draftees. If there is a new draft there will be a really, really large pissed off youth of America.

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