Well, let's look at some of the statistics:
“The Bush-Rumsfeld war machine is responsible for the bloated budget deficit, which will expand as the voids are filled… inevitably by a draft if we
remain on the same course.”
“By New Year's Day 2004, one service, the Army, had blocked over 40,000 troops from discharge or retirement on their appointed dates. Over 16,000 of
them were National Guard. All told, over 70,000 troops have now been affected by Stop-Loss.”
“On January 20th, Lieutenant General James Helmly, chief of the U.S. Army Reserve, told reporters that the current situation is untenable, and that
the military is facing a severe retention crisis, because the use of troops, especially Reservists is, in his view, abusive. Addressing troops, he
said, ‘We value your service and we're not going to run this like a doggone flesh farm.'”
“Repeated, long-term deployments will clearly take a toll on spouses and children of our men and women in the military here at home. Military service
always entails time away from home, but we think that the active services - and particularly the Army - must find a way to better balance the demands
of overseas deployments with the needs of troops' families back home. Otherwise, we may face a mid-grade retention problem in the coming years that
will be devastating to our forces.”
We're not going to reimplement a draft. There is no need for it at all. The disadvantages of using compulsion to bring into the armed forces the
men and women needed are notable. The disadvantages to the individuals so brought in are notable. If you think back to when we had the draft, people
were brought in; they were paid some fraction of what they could make in the civilian manpower market because they were without choices. Big
categories were exempted -- people that were in college, people that were teaching, people that were married. It varied from time to time, but there
were all kinds of exemptions. And what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no
advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous
amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone....
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, January 7, 2003
www.fromthewilderness.com...
It seems to me the draft will be reinstated but I hope not. Even though Rummy sure acts like it won't be.