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  Sunday  December 12  2004    12: 48 PM

no draft, no iraq

Uncle Sam Wants Your Kids – Now!
By David H. Hackworth


Since this tragic war kicked off in March 2003, the United States has evacuated an estimated 50,000 KIA, WIA and non-battle casualties from Iraq back to the States – leaving 50,000 slots that have had to be filled.

The job of finding fresh bodies to keep our units topped off falls mainly to the Army Recruiting Command. But the “making-quota” jazz put out by the Recruiting Command and the Pentagon to hype their billion-dollar recruiting effort, with its huge TV expenditure and big expansion of recruiters during the past year, is pure unadulterated spin. Not that this is anything new. The Command has a sorry reputation for using smoke and mirrors to cover up poor performance.

“Hack, here’s a snapshot of how little of our 1st Quarter mission has been achieved,” says an Army recruiter. “Look at it from a perspective of a business releasing quarterly earnings information. To keep unit manning levels up out in the field, especially in Iraq, there’s no question our recruiting mission is in serious trouble.”

“These are totals for the 41 USAREC (Recruiting Command) Battalions, so these stats represent the USAREC mission accomplishment:

Regular Army Volume (all RA contracts):
Mission: 25,322
Achieved: 12,703 (50.17 percent)

Army Reserve Volume:
Mission: 7,373
Achieved: 3,206 (43.48 percent).”

The Army National Guard is faring no better. A Guard retention NCO says: “The word is out on the streets of Washington, D.C. ‘Do not join the Guard.’ I see these words echoing right across the U.S.A.”

By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot from their right.

Shades of our last years in Vietnam.
[...]

Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we’ll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force.

[more]


Steve Gilliard quotes the above article and adds his own comments...

Draft is on the way


It's gutcheck time, and Congress isn't going to pass.

If given a choice of either withdrawing from Iraq or a draft, well, let's say hello to President Sadr. People, and not just liberals, are going to resist the draft if it comes.

From saying things are going well to saying "well, we need your kids for Iraq" is a seismic change, and one I don't think Bush or the Congress is ready for. Forget the country. Iraq has been someone else's problem and one other people share by buying yellow ribbons to stick on their cars. They have zero plans of offering up Bush for their kids and I don't care how they voted in November. If Iraq was the issue, he would have lost. It wasn't and it's going to be soon. Our Pollyanna President has not come close to preparing the US for sacrifice on this level. He's always treated Iraq with platitudes. The draft isn't platitudes, it's real. The neocons talk big, but they aren't expecting a draft either, because they know support for Iraq is an inch deep. If that grim reaper comes to the doors of the middle class, Iraq and their dreams of empire are over.

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Officer crisis hits Army Reserve


The Army Reserve is facing an extreme shortage of company officers, a situation aggravated by a surge in resignation requests.

The shortage — primarily of captains — has seriously reduced the capabilities of the Reserve, and continued losses will further reduce the readiness of "an already depleted military force," according to an Army briefing document submitted last month to Congress.

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