Many rumors have been floating around the Internet about the possibility of the draft restarting on June 15, 2005. The press meanwhile has not reported the actual facts, just as they have “somehow” ignored that Bush invaded Iraq for its oil and is letting his oil industry cronies make off with all the booty by the tankerful.
Here are the actual facts on the possibility of the draft returning.
First of all, the draft never really left us. Selective Service has been registering people for over twenty years and at any moment the President can go to Congress and ask them to reauthorize conscription. It doesn’t take much to imagine a re-elected Bush going to Congress and saying “We cannot cut and run from Iraq or the War on Terror. I need you to reauthorize conscription.” Would a re-elected Republican Congress give it to him? You bet. An article in the July 13 issue of Family Circle reported that Rove surveyed Republican members of Congress to see if they would support the President if the draft needed to be reinstated. The answer was they would.
And they would not have to pass a whole new draft law to do it. All that is needed is a “trigger resolution”, which could be passed in an afternoon—and bingo! No debate, no regular bill, just a short resolution passed quickly in the dead of night and the draft is back for men 18 to 26.
That is why the Democratic draft legislation being offered by Rangel and Hollings is totally irrelevant. These are known protest bills and actually propose drafting women, just to make sure they will never see the light of day. Rangel and Hollings offered them to raise the issue and confront Bush. Hollings even said he wouldn’t vote for his own bill!
They are not needed—and the press and the Republicans will bring them up as red herrings to distract everyone from what is really going on: Bush is spending $28 million this year to reduce draft activation time from the usual 193 days all the way down to 75 days. He is quietly, behind the scenes, oiling up the draft machinery—getting ready to reinstate for the Spring of 2005.
Only in this draft there will be NO student deferments, other than finishing out the semester, or the year if you are a senior. Divinity School students, however, get full four-year deferments. We might see a lot of young men getting religion. By the way, Canada has also tightened up the border and signed the Smart Border agreement after 9/11, and it is doubtful that going north will be an answer.
What is the proof? The government’s own document, the SSS Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2004.
The Selective Service System, or the SSS, has for decades operated at a low level of readiness. Readiness Exercises are conducted on a multi-year cycle but historically these have been little more than getting draft board volunteers together and going over the procedures of what would happen under reinstatement and training new members every summer. And the draft boards themselves have become 80% vacant over the decades.
In the current 5-year cycle of exercises, however, the SSS is clearly ramping up the draft machinery to an unprecedented level. In fact, the mission of the Selective Service is to be ready to conscript within 193 days of reauthorization, over 6 months before any lottery could be held and report orders issued. The 2004 plan reduces that time to 75 days.
By March 31, 2005, a report must be issued by the Director of the SSS to the Pentagon that the system will be ready to hold the first draft lottery within 75 days, rather than the usual 193 days.
“Strategic Objective 1.2: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 56 State Headquarters,
442 Area Offices and 1,980 Local Boards are operational within 75 days of an authorized
return to conscription.”
Tie that to this objective:
“An annual report providing the results of the implementation of these performance
measures will be submitted by March 31, 2005.”
75 days from March 31, 2005 is about June 15, 2005. If Bush asks for reinstatement on April 1, Congress could pass it that night and the first batch of over one million 20 year-olds would face the lottery as soon as that date.
Here is how the $28 million is being spent according to the official document:
“Strategic Goal 1: Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the Manpower
Delivery Systems (Projected allocation for FY 2004 – $7,942,000)
Strategic Goal 2: Improve overall Registration Compliance and Service to the Public (Projected allocation FY 2004 – $8,769,000)
Strategic Goal 3: Enhance external and internal customer service
(Projected allocation for FY 2004 – $10,624,000)
Strategic Goal 4: Enhance the system which guarantees that each conscientious objector is properly classified, placed, and monitored. (Projected allocation for FY 2004 – $955,000)”
It should be noted the $28 million is not a huge increase, as the 2003 SSS budget was around $26 million. Yet reducing activation time from 193 to 75 days is clearly laid out in the document. The SSS also began a crash recruitment drive last summer and fall to fill those 10,000 plus board vacancies by Spring 2005. That has been noted by the press.
But the following has not.
In analyzing each of the 2004 goals in detail it is painfully obvious that there are hidden “activation bombshells” in this so-called “Performance Plan”. Goal number 1 in particular brings the combat induction process up to 95% operational readiness, going so far as to actually hold a mock lottery drawing this year and to issue sample orders to report for the famous medical exam. The document does not reveal the day in 2004 the mock lottery is to be held, but it likely to be any day or week now.
In addition, the Medical Draft, or Health Care Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS in the document), is for the first time brought up to full readiness by next year. This draft would take men and women up to age 44 if they are doctors, nurses or one of 60-some medical specialties. No medical deferments allowed. Previous readiness exercises merely went over what would happen with HCPDS and updated the guide. The 2004 plan actually develops a readiness exercise for the Medical Draft that would be conducted next year. Plus HCPDS must be ready to conscript by June.
“Develop an Area Office Prototype Exercise which will test the HCPDS work flows and its automated support programs. FY 2004.
Prepare, conduct, and evaluate an Area Office Prototype Exercise for health care in FY 2005.”
Goal number two increase registration compliance and actually tries to assign Registrars to nearly every high school, the goal being 85% of the schools. This could very well indicate that Bush plans to have a very large draft indeed. Several hundred thousand men from each year could be inducted, while the Medical draft is designed to induct up to 80,000 per year. At first, the system probably could not stand to draft more than 200,000 to 300,000 per year but after that it could go much higher.
Goal number three makes ready the administration of the draft, down to making sure the system can answer all correspondence within 10 days and that new tracking software is implemented as quickly as possible.
Goal number four is particularly ominous.
“Strategic Objective 4.1: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 48 Alternative Service Offices and 48 Civilian Review Boards are operational within 96 days after notification of a return to induction.”
For 31 years, the Conscientious Objector system, called the Alternative Service, has lain dormant. The 2004 plan also calls for this to be brought up to speed and to be ready to decide cases and place COs in the Alternative Service by July 6, 2005 (96 days after March 31, 2005). The SSS is even going so far as to draw up the SOPs, the Standard Operating Procedures which identify local employers eligible to receive cheap AS workers and to also draw up the actual MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding the employer must sign to get their CO workers and allow their mandatory attendance to be monitored. This is the last obstacle to be hurdled before the draft could actually be ready for activation under the law.
So Bush is filling the draft board seats, testing the entire combat draft this year and the medical draft next year (early next year?) and making sure the Alternative Service is geared up—all by March 31 of 2005.
But that’s not all going on quietly behind the scenes.
It turns out that the SSS has presented a secret 6-page proposal to the Pentagon and given to the Congress that calls for the creation of a “Skills Draft”, conscripting men and women up to age 34 for non-combat jobs such as linguist, computer specialist or engineer—the first three occupations the DoD has already identified as being in short supply. Modeled after the Medical Draft, the secret document was obtained only through the FOI Act by a reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
If this is created after Bush’s re-election, DoD could theoretically ask for hundreds of different occupations to be drafted. The SSS, right this very minute is designing procedures and a massive database that would track everyone who had special skills—including their entire skill set and most important, their address.
Why would Bush need such a large draft? The answer lies in the secret plan that Wesley Clark revealed in his book Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire:
“I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, and one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. So, I thought, this is what they mean when they talk about ‘draining the swamp.’"
Assuming Libya is now off the list, according to Clark Bush and the neo-cons plan to invade 5 more countries. That need does not include trying to defeat the insurgents solely with the U.S. military as a re-elected Bush might attempt. Bush, moreover, is building 14 permanent bases and huge intelligence centers in Iraq and has no intention of ever leaving that oil to the Russians or even worse, the French.
The major media cover hardly anything that John Kerry says, especially if it is about the draft. So you would never know it, but John Kerry has a No-Draft Plan, a plan to strengthen the military in key areas yet draw down U.S. troop levels in Iraq by internationalizing the situation and then getting out as soon as possible.
Here are the five main points of Kerry’s No-Draft Plan:
1. Move some paper-pushers to combat (lots of potential there)
2. Increase enlistment with real scholarships, benefits and pay raises
3. Let troops know Special Ops will hunt al-Queda, no more invasions needed, so re-up rate goes up. "Primarily a law enforcement effort, not a full military effort", said John Kerry on Meet The Press.
4. Start a "Civilian Stability Corps" that would help in reconstructing Afghanistan and Iraq and relieve military pressure. It would be kind of like the Peace Corps—but on steroids.
5. GET FOREIGN TROOPS TO COME INTO INSTEAD OF LEAVE IRAQ.
Kerry gave some details about the proposed Civilian Stability Corps, made up of volunteers:
"...I propose that we enlist thousands of them in a Civilian Stability Corps, a reserve organization of volunteers ready to help win the peace in troubled places. Like military reservists, they will have peacetime jobs; but in times of national need, they will be called into service to restore roads, renovate schools, open hospitals, repair power systems, draft a constitution, or build a police force. A Civilian Stability Corps can bring the best of America to the worst of the world—and reduce pressure on the military."
- Source: Kerry, John. "Protecting Our Military Families in Times of War: A Military Family Bill of Rights." March 17, 2004.
http://johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0317.html >
In April, on a conference call with 130 College Newspaper Editors, Kerry said “No Draft”, that he would have a sensible foreign policy that would not require reinstatement. And in June, Kerry told a Wisconsin high school that if elected, a draft would be "absolutely unnecessary".
Kerry’s plan calls for increasing active-duty troop levels by 40,000 people. He also doubles the number of Special Ops troops. Half the 40,000 being added are civil engineering/reconstruction specialists and half are combat, costing an extra $7 billion, but it relieves the pressure on the Guard and Reserves for overseas deployments and essentially saves the Volunteer Army. $7 billion is well worth not having to bring back the draft!
Kerry charges that Bush is ruining the Volunteer approach with long Guard and Reserve deployments and numerous stop-loss orders, which Kerry says is a “Back-door Draft”. Since Kerry will increase pay, benefits, scholarships and reduce long deployments of regular troops and the reserves, if he is elected the re-enlistment rates and recruitment rates will return to normal. Recently, troops returning from Iraq are reportedly leaving the Service in huge numbers, although denied by DoD (see David Hackworth, Voting With their Feet
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38644).
With this No-Draft Plan, Kerry will not have to resort to conscription, even after Bush has made such a mess of it in Iraq. Kerry has also pledged that he will push renewable energy development and true energy independence, “so that we never again have soldiers dying for oil”.
Kerry has criticized the inequality of the draft, that the poor and minorities are inducted in higher numbers than their fair share and that the draft is a source of conflict. John Kerry will not reinstate the draft—outside of the invasion of the United States by China or something like that.
The choice is thus clear to all voters. Vote for Bush and you are also voting for the resumption of the draft—to man his hidden agenda of invading more countries and staying in Iraq forever.
Or vote for Kerry and you are voting PNAC out of the White House, and with it Bush’s hidden agenda to bring back the draft so U.S. companies can dominate the world’s remaining oil supply.
Finally, a draft is morally reprehensible, an infringement of freedom against the principles of the Constitution. We know that Bush cares nothing about morality when it comes to Iraq and that Kerry has over the years always expressed real opposition to the draft for a number of moral and ethical reasons. Having lived through the Vietnam era, Kerry knows well the long history of conflict and opposition that the draft has wrought.
John Kerry will not reinstate the draft, but Bush is secretly gearing up the whole system right now for the summer of next year.
Moral opposition to conscription goes all the way back to the year 1814. In a response to a proposed draft to fight the British, Daniel Webster perhaps said it best:
“Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, sir, indeed it is not.
"The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves.
"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?"
BUSH ’04 = DRAFT ‘05
Link:
http://www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html
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