Posted on 01/28/2005 10:37:21 PM PST by churchillbuff
I only read this article far enough to see the name of Gen. Merrill McPeak who I can attest was an idiot.
Rolling Stone= DU farm team
Absolutely worthless for music and current events.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
"Retired Gen. Tony McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff during the first Gulf War, delivered the Democratic radio address supporting implementation of the 9/11 commission's recommendations for national security.
"As president, John Kerry will not waste a minute in bringing action on the reforms urged by the 9/11 commission," McPeak said of the Massachusetts senator nominated by the Democrats this week."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/31/dems.radio/
There are leftists quoted in this article, but there's also Lt. Gen. James Helmly, the commander of the Army Reserve, who wrote in a memo to senior Army leadership in December, that the Reserve "is rapidly degenerating into a broken force."
I don't understand how a military draft can be legal: the 13th Amendment PROHIBITS what it calls "involuntary servitude", except in cases in which a crime has been committed.
If you read the Amendment, it SEPARATES slavery from "involuntary servitude"...so the prohibition of a draft draft should be in effect, no?
""Richard Flahavan, spokesman for Selective Service, tells Rolling Stone that preparing for a skills-based draft is "in fact what we have been doing." For starters, the agency has updated a plan to draft nurses and doctors. But that's not all. "Our thinking was that if we could run a health-care draft in the future," Flahavan says, "then with some very slight tinkering we could change that skill to plumbers or linguists or electrical engineers or whatever the military was short." ""
The only people talking about the draft are the Democrats and the Bush haters, who try to make up those rumors to attack Bush.
There are idiot defeatists who seek to capitalize on idiotic failure and then there are soldiers...Hemly is a soldier. McPeak single handedly almost destroyed the Air Force...I'm sure Rolling Stone loves him as does John Kerry.
If the selective service spokesman who is quoted in the article is right, and they end up with some kind of "skills-based draft", will you take back your dismissive "zzzzz"? I doubt it. I suspect if they start up a draft, you'll be supportive.
Damn. Can we ZOT Rolling Stone?
Thank God I cancled that one 15 years ago!
The best way to recruit more troops would be to offer them large incentives for combat duty. If enlisted troops in Iraq were making an average of $100,000/year we'd have huge supply of gungho volunteers. It sounds like a lot of money, but when you compare it to all the other costs of fighting a war it wouldn't cost that much at all.
The head of the Army Reserve is an "idiot defeatist"?
Only if they take you.
The Selective Service has always been making those plans, that IF there is ever a need, they are ready, but that has nothing to do with the actual likelyhood of it happening.
Of course, you would know this, if you bothered to get the facts, instead of blindly spreading the misleading propaganda.
http://www.sss.gov/
"On October 5, 2004, the House of Representatives voted 402 - 2 to defeat H.R. 163, the bill cited as proof that the Selective Service was preparing to reinstate a military draft. The vote made official what has been a reality since January 7, 2003, when H.R. 163 was introduced despite nearly total opposition in Congress to restoring the draft. Without Congressional support, the draft cannot be reinstated. A similar bill languishes in the Senate.
Both President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry have stated for the record that they oppose a draft. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also has opposed the draft on numerous occasions.
Since 1980, the Selective Service System has discharged its mission of preparing to manage a draft if and when Congress and the President so direct. The House action proves that the Selective Service has gotten no such direction. That being the case, the Agency will maintain its readiness as required by law, and to register young men between the ages of 18 and 25. That mission has been reaffirmed frequently by successive Administrations and by Congress under the leadership of both parties."
God knows why I feed your ego but...how exactly did this memo become public? Hmmmmmmmm?????
Good point. We're paying battalions of fat-assed bureaucrats, in our city, state and federal governments, in the $100k range (they get that kind of money because they're unionized). Yet we give our fighting men peanuts. It ought to be the other way around.
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