Bush's draft dodge

[cal04]

The president doesn't support a draft, but our Army isn't built to fight a war such as Iraq without one.

PERHAPS THE ONLY issue in which there is near-total bipartisan unity in Washington is opposition to the draft. Those who oppose continuing the war in Iraq object to the draft for obvious reasons. But supporters of the president's Iraq policy should not get off so easily.

By vetoing the initial Iraq war supplemental spending bill because it contained a timetable for withdrawal, President Bush clearly believes that a substantial number of U.S. troops will be needed in Iraq for an indefinite period of time. But how are we going to sustain operations in Iraq beyond 12 to 18 months? The president insists that setting a withdrawal timetable will tie the hands of commanders on the ground, but it is not the timetable that will tie their hands. It is the breaking of the U.S. Army.

Currently, our ground forces, specifically the Army, are stretched to their limits. Our soldiers and Marines have been fighting in Iraq for more than four years and in Afghanistan for almost six. To meet the demands of the president's surge, the Army is scrambling to find enough troops. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has already been forced to extend tours for soldiers serving in Iraq from 12 to 15 months. Soldiers are being sent back to Iraq for their second and third deployments; some have not even been home a year before being sent back. Many new recruits are being sent into intense combat in Baghdad without proper training. And in some cases, the Army has been so desperate that, as Mark Benjamin of Salon magazine first reported, it is even forcing injured soldiers back into combat before they have adequately recovered. Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey recently remarked that "the ground combat capability of the U.S. armed forces is shot."

Meanwhile, the National Guard is in even worse shape. The head of the National Guard has said that 90% of the Army National Guard is poorly equipped, raising real questions about the Guard's ability to respond to disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the tornado that wiped out Greensburg, Kan. Yet more than 13,000 Guardsmen have been notified that they likely will be sent back to Iraq in 2008.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-korb26may26,0,7958579.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Bringing back the draft is a horrible idea, but it is probably the only way to get the masses

involved enough to actually rise up and do something about what is happening to this country.

[liberal renegade]

2. I don't believe a damn word he says

[madrchsod]

3. the war would be over tomorrow if the draft

would be reinstated with no deferment other than psychical or mental reasons. i have no doubt about that

[PsN2Wind]

4. I wouldn't even exclude those with mental or physical

problems that were not extreme. Everyone that has been in the service knows that for every actual combat troop there are several others doing often mundane or even menial tasks that require little physical fitness or great mental ability to do.
Edited to reflect that if EVERY member of the military had to pull a tour before the first one pulled his second and if the REMFs in the Green Zone had to pull one patrol a month this CF would be over faster than with a draft.

[lob1]

5. Reinstating the draft

I've seen some comments about reinstating the draft with no deferments. If they did reinstate the draft, please forget about the "no deferments" part.
What politician is going to go along with a bill that makes his/her own kids go to war? If they reinstate the draft, they'll reinstate a way out for their own.

[wakeme2008]

6. I would bet money there are thousands of Pentagon Desk Hogs that have

not pulled the first tour.