U.S. Readies for Draft

[Scooter24]

Despite denials that the U.S. plans to re-institute the draft, the Pentagon has stepped up preparations for a new Selective Service System that could allow for a full-blown draft by next year.


Every few months Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gets peppered with the nettlesome question about whether the administration, straining to keep boots on the ground around the globe, is considering reviving the compulsory military service draft – moribund since 1973. The answer is always an unqualified “No.”

.......

But savvy draft-watchers, including author, radio personality and attorney Col. Ron Ray, USMCR (Ret.), dispute the “is not getting ready” phrase, suggesting that there is, indeed, evidence indicating a new, heightened urgency within the agency, which these days is independent and no longer falls under the aegis of the Department of Defense. Ray himself had served as a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration.


For sure, “The Selective Service System’s Annual Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2004,” is a document that leaves the careful reader with anything but the impression of a sleepy agency drilling for a fire it knows will never flare.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/6/24/104815.shtml (Warning: Source)
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Be wary considering the source, but it is ironic that the "draft" talk is suddenly becoming a topic discussed by republicans, after months of denials.

[drkedjr]

1. Maybe this will wake-up

college students here in the "home land."

[Gothmog]

2. Newsmax is such a bad source

That there is a good chance that a draft will not happen.

[Beaker]

3. There's NOT going to be a draft.

anybody who feels the need to fret over the possibility should probably read this column by steve chapman...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0406100037jun10,1,7142203.column?coll=chi-news-col

...Lawrence Korb, who served as assistant defense secretary for manpower under President Ronald Reagan, points out that the Army currently needs only about 75,000 new bodies each year. A bigger force might raise the number to 150,000.

In a country where some 4 million people turn 18 each year, it's hardly an insurmountable task to find that many enlistees. In 1990, after all, the pool of 18-year-olds was smaller than it is today. What makes the task easier is that the Air Force and Navy are cutting their numbers, which means they'll need fewer recruits...

...Why? Draftees, he notes, typically serve just two years, and only 10 percent can be expected to re-enlist. In the current all-volunteer force, by contrast, newcomers sign up for four years, and about half stick around after their original term is up. The cost of training an individual soldier for the modern Army is far higher than it was during Vietnam--and higher turnover means more soldiers have to be trained. Spending money to train draftees makes about as much sense as putting 65-year-olds through medical school: They won't be around long enough to provide a decent return on the investment.

The other practical problem is that the draft would replace men and women who choose to put their lives on the line with youngsters who would rather be doing anything else. Does anyone think you get better performance in any venture from unwilling teenage participants than from self-motivated volunteers? It's hard to find generals singing the praises of conscription, because they know a volunteer army is a higher-quality army...

[lanparty]

4. As the body bags pile higher ...

... you can expect the enlistment numbers to go down. The Pentagon "says" they are meeting their targets, but let me tell you a story.

I worked for a company with quarterly and annual bonuses. There was ALWAYS a big push to meet the numbers. We'd ALWAYS do well in Q1 and Q2, then we would have a slump in Q3. And they'd make sure to talk it up in the quarterly meeting. Than we'd always pull in out in Q4.

That's not just good drama. The executives salaries were tied to the bonus structure. We would take home a couple extra hundred dollars (which were partially deducted from raises), but they would take home tens of thousands and MILLIONS in the case of the CEO. So they would just churn the numbers and make things work out.

The reason the stop loss orders came down is that people are LEAVING the military and they aren't getting enough people to fill those spots. The military IS NOT meeting it's recruiting targets. It's just "REVISING" the targets.

[Beaker]

5. and as people get out of school to a "jobless recovery"

you can expect enlistment numbers to go up.

I've seen other people making a lot of the same points that Chapman does, and I tend to agree with them. there's too much time & money involved in training the troops, to expend the effort & resources on people who don't plan on making it a career.
Short of a full blown "world war", I don't think that there'll be a draft- and even then, probably not because patriotic fervor would drive plenty to enlist.