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To: Brilliant
Speaking only from my personal experience, I am strongly against the draft.

IMHO, the greatest untold story of the 20th century is the history of the American military, post-Vietnam to the end of the Carter Administration.

Despite the inept leadership under Jimmy Carter, and the social experiments played during that rudderless administration, the effort and leadership displayed by tens of thousands of young officers & non-coms made it work, somehow.

Looking back on my experiences, I keep asking myself, "how did we make this damn thing work?" Our equipment was aged and growing more obsolete by the day, we had shortages of funding for training and maintenance, and the standards for new enlistees were far below that required today.

As I reminisce about the absolutely superb officers & NCOs I worked with every day, I'm reminded of the words of the final scene in "The Bridges of Toko-Ri": "where do these men come from?"

It's only my opinion, but a return to the draft would undo all that was accomplished by all of those fine soldiers.

186 posted on 11/19/2006 12:12:18 PM PST by Night Hides Not (Closing in on 3000 posts, of which maybe 50 were worthwhile!)
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To: Night Hides Not

You, like me, must have had a VOLAR rug, VOLAR bedspread and VOLAR rug in our VOLAR barracks.

The VOLAR beer machine in the day room didn't last long.


194 posted on 11/19/2006 12:16:50 PM PST by PeteB570 (Guns, what real men want for Christmas)
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To: Night Hides Not
It's only my opinion, but a return to the draft would undo all that was accomplished by all of those fine soldiers.

It's not that I disagree with you, per se, it's just that I don't understand your point at all.

How would a draft "undo?"

288 posted on 11/19/2006 2:05:11 PM PST by paulat
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To: Night Hides Not
Despite the inept leadership under Jimmy Carter

The fact that it took a knucklehead like Jimmy Carter to restore registration after Richard Nixon (arguably the most competent President at foreign/defense matters of the last half of the 20th century) got rid of it tells you all you need to know about the merits of the idea.

411 posted on 11/20/2006 6:51:04 AM PST by steve-b (It's hard to be religious when certain people don't get struck by lightning.)
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