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.
http://www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.htmlBy 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.
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