This draft talk is one of the stupidest, most insulting memes running around in the Looney Left*.  

I can't tell you how angry it makes me that so many folks so willingly twist / distort / amplify an *insanely* serious issue that otherwise lacks substance in such a striking way. What's most disgusting is that the person who's probably going to be president in a few months + his running mate are some of the most active participants in this idiotic charade.  AND at the same time, they're some of the loudest voices bluntly insisting that we need more troops in Iraq.

Well before we reinstitute a draft, we'll simply lower enlistment standards back to Cold War standards when we had ~3M active duty soldiers in uniform rather than the 1M in uniform today.  No soldier today wants to share a foxhole with a draftee.   No commander wants to have to issue orders to one and rely upon them being carried out properly.   Few mid-senior officers even know what it's like to have to command a draftee.  No serious politician thinks such a measure could ever pass Congress.  

In fact, as far as I know, the only folks seriously talking about it are Democrats trying to scare folks about Republicans.   Personally, I think this is a very lame attempt to recreate the Looney Left's Vietnam-era glory days by creating a groundswell public scare.   Pathetic.

Well, the issue's finally gotten bad enough that Rumsfeld felt compelled to write an OpEd -

...To my knowledge, in the time I have served as secretary of Defense, the idea of reinstating draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered, or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration. When asked about it, the president has flatly rejected the idea. Similarly, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said a draft is not needed or desirable. And the U.S. House of Representatives voted down a bill, offered by several Democratic congressmen, to reinstate the draft by a resounding 402-2 just two weeks ago.

And those 2 votes for the draft - 2 of the looniest toons on that side of the fence - Charles Rangel & Fritz Hollings.   While we're on this topic, let's touch a couple meme's that have been going around - military reenlistment rates are UP, not DOWN -

As it stands today, the active Army and Marine Corps continue to exceed their recruiting goals despite the high pace of activity. Retention is also doing well. Particularly striking are reenlistment rates for units that have deployed overseas. Of the Army's ten active-duty divisions, nine are exceeding re-enlistment goals by five percent or more.

And overstretch?

For example, there are over one million soldiers in the active Army, Army reserve and National Guard. Of those, less than 12 percent are actually deployed to the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters. And the Army has already increased its active strength by as many as 30,000 troops since September 11, 2001.

The issue is that our forces, particularly the Army, are not properly organized for the post-Cold War era. Too many skills needed on Active duty are heavily concentrated in the Reserve components. Too many of the Active forces are not readily deployable. Too many military personnel — tens of thousands — are performing tasks that could and should be performed by civilians.

Not only should we put this issue to bed, we should publicly flog any asshat that brings this up as a serious campaign issue.   Kerry & Edwards included.

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*NOTE - when I say "looney left" - I'm specifically describing the idiot wing of the Democratic party that idolizes Michael Moore, Arundhati Roy, Charles Rangel, supports Sharpton & to a lesser extent Jackson, believes America is to blame for all the world's ills, etc.   By no means am I saying all lefties are Looney (for ex., DP Moynahan, Lieberman, Clinton (Bill, and only somewhat), etc.).  

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