Draft Possible, Says One Guy in Kookamunga!
While I’m whacking the Washington Post, let me take a swing at another steaming pile of bias masquerading as a news story in today’s edition.
Here’s the story title: Small Minority Says Draft Could Happen
And here’s how the story begins:
Many military experts believe that reviving some sort of military draft is extremely unlikely, even impossible — but not all of them.
The issue has taken on urgency because of the dynamics of the presidential campaign, with Democratic operatives using the prospect of a draft to drive the youth vote, and the Democratic nominee himself raising the possibility on the campaign trail.
Neither presidential candidate supports resuming conscription. President Bush, responding to John F. Kerry’s assertion that there is a “great potential” that a reelected Bush could restart a draft, insists that it will not happen. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week: “The truth is, we do not need a draft. We’re not going to have a draft.”
Overwhelmingly, military insiders agree with both of Rumsfeld’s points. “Very simply and strongly, I do not foresee a need nor a desire for a draft,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Joseph K. Kellogg Jr. said in a comment typical of those heard across the armed forces. “The all-volunteer military is a thing of true magnificence and should not, and need not, be changed.” Resuming conscription, he added, has become one of the lethal “third rails” in American politics, akin to fiddling with Social Security.
Okay, so the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense have said, without equivocation, that there is no need for a draft and there will not be a draft.
That certainly seems to indicate that the Democrats who continue to raise the spectre of a draft are…well…lying through their teeth.
But that’s not good enough for the Washington POst. Instead of taking the word of the President, Secretary of Defense, and the overwhelming number of “military insiders”, they’ve cast out their net and found some folks who could imagine a scenario where there’d be a draft.
No. Really? They found former military personnel with imaginations and opinions? I’m shocked!
If you read the article, you’ll note that these scenarios are mostly based on the person’s sheer opinion. They say things like, “Well, if we decide to commit troops here, it’s obvious that we’ll need to raise more troops”. But it’s not obvious at all. The opinions presuppose that the current troop levels remain exactly as they are.
But they aren’t. You may remember back a whole month ago, Donald Rumsfeld announced a large troop realignment that would bring a considerable number of troops out of Europe and Asia and reassign them to stateside bases and elsewhere for rapid deployment to trouble spots. We’re also assuming that the same number of troops will be necessary in Iraq for the forseeable future, which is far from any reasonable prediction.
The likelihood of a draft is, by any reasonable measure that doesn’t involve a magic 8-ball and a hit of peyote for a vision quest, remote, barring a concerted, organized attack on the US (you know, like Pearl Harbor). That’s the long and short of it and anyone who tells you differently is deceiving you.
It’s fashionable for the Democrats and their willing syncophants in the MSM to gin up charges against Republicans that have not a shred of reality to them. This is just another one of those stories and I’m ashamed that my hometown newspaper has chosen to throw away its integrity to play the political game.
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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., President George Bush
I am shocked, shocked to hear that the Washington Post has published a story with a liberal slant. It's normally so objective, and all. Don't forget, Jimmie, you have two hometown papers, and the other one doesn't have the liberal bias you keep complaining about. In fact, based on the fact that you link exclusively to the Post for Washington news, and never the Times, one would have to assume that you just want stories you can rail about….
I generally link to the Post for three reasons. First, because it's one of the nation's "landmark" papers – one that people from Anchorage to Miami recognize. I like the weight of using the Post. Second, they're a more complete newspaper than the Washington Times. They have stories that you don't find in the Times in areas like sports and science, which is largely what I read in the Post. But to do that I end up at least skimming the headlines on their web site. But the third reason is that as a national newspaper, they're often quoted as an objective news source. I think it's worthwhile to point out the cases I see when they are biased beyond the normal biases that you'd expect out of human beings.