Wow. The fear-mongering from the extreme fringe on BOTH sides of this thing is becoming disturbing. Its clouding the REAL issues that this, and any, election should be based on.
Cleland and Dean both say the draft WILL be instituted if Bush is re-elected....how the hell would they know?
And this very article states this nugget...
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Partly to remedy this heavy use of the Guard and Reserves, Kerry has proposed expanding the active-duty Army by 40,000 troops, but without resorting to a draft.
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So how exactly is he going to expand the services by 40,000 people without forcing them too? Especially when he himself has stated that even if elected, he sees the US in Iraq for the next 4 years?
Well here is how...
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Kitchens said Kerry could meet this goal of 40,000 by ordering an intensification of recruitment efforts.
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So, you will get people to sign up without being made too, to go to a country that you yourself have stated the US will have presence in for at least 4 years. In essence you are going to get young people to sign up of their own valition to go to a war that (according to you Mr Kerry) they want no part of, by being "more intense" in recruiting?
Is their ANY logic in this stance?
Well maybe Bush agrees after all.
Both Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have repeatedly said they oppose a draft.
"We don't need the draft," Bush told a campaign audience in Florida last month. "I'll tell you one way you make (the all-volunteer Army) work. I just signed a defense appropriations bill, which is the fourth year in a row in which we've raised the pay of those who wear our uniform, and the pay's getting better. And the housing is getting better."
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Noting the size of the U.S. population, more than 290 million people, Rumsfeld said, “If you add up everyone we are looking for in the active forces, 1.4 million and the Guard and Reserve and the selective reserve and individual ready reserve and if you add them all up, it’s about 2.5 million. And all you have to do is alter the incentives and we can attract and retain all the people we need. We do not need to go to compulsion.”
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So the "neo-cons" have the exact same idea as the liberals?
Rumsfeld recalled that as a member of the House of Representatives in the 1960s, he introduced legislation to create an all-volunteer Army.
He thought in the 1960s that “we owed it to people to pay them and treat them like we would if we had to go out and in (the labor) market, attract and retain them.”
And in today’s all-volunteer military, Rumsfeld said, “That’s what we do.”
Uh oh Lanny...NOW what???
