Help! Need Draft Info!

[maxwall]

My fiance wants to convince her rethug best friend that the draft will happen next year. I know I've seen some great info that people have collected. It needs to be solid, from gov't website or gov't transcripts. (The friend is so nuts, she thinks any media is liberal...)
I'd love any help. Send me a PM or continue this thread. Thanks!

[TexasBushwhacker]

1. Here ya go! Got this from Rock the Vote

I posted this a few days ago. Really good info from Rock the Vote:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2416334#2425559

[JohnOneillsMemory]

2. Full story on both the Rangel protest bill and The Real One-

(I copied this from a post by DemsWillWin, I think. Very useful.)

Don't be confused by the Rangel DRAFT PROTEST BILL and the new BUSH SKILLS AND COMBAT DRAFT ACTIVITY. It's easy to get mixed up because both would draft women and both would expand the age up to 34 from 25. BUT Rangel's bill is a protest bill and hasn't a PRAYER of passing because it DRAFTS WOMEN for COMBAT.

The GOP hates that idea. Rangel proposed it because he knew it wouldn't pass but it would make it

The NEW BUSH SKILLS DRAFT would only DRAFT women for NON-COMBAT skills job.

They are two different animals.

The SSS secret Issue Paper which was an agenda for a 2003 top-level meeting between the head of the SSS and Deputy Undersecretary Abell in charge of Personnel and Readiness of the DoD, see: http://www.blatanttruth.org/selective_service091304.pdf

It's important that we not mix these up.

Here are the differences between the RANGEL PROTEST BILL and the secretive behind-the-scenes activity at the SSS and the DoD to ready not only a BUSH COMBAT DRAFT in 2005 but also a BUSH SKILLS DRAFT and BUSH MEDICAL DRAFT in 2006 or sooner.

RANGEL PROTEST BILL



Would replace current draft legislation drafting only men for combat, retaining current exemptions such a high school and Conscientious Objector status

Drafts Women for combat as well as men, ages 18-34

Does not draft for skills, combat draft only


ACTUAL BUSH SSS ACTIVITY TOWARD A 2005 DRAFT


Could draft MEN ONLY for combat, 18-25 (Current law)

"Groundwork being laid" (SSS Spokesman Amon) for a NON-COMBAT SKILLS DRAFT, men and women age 18-34. 2-year process to gear up SKILLS DRAFT started nearly 2 YEARS AGO in Feb. 2003, meaning a skills draft would be ready in 2005. (a new law wuold be passed if Bush gets back in)

The MEDICAL DRAFT registration data collection is also going to be readied for operational use in 2005 by using the SKILLS DRAFT work they've done and make the reg card you'd fill out at the Post Office contain all the listed medical skills. This means the Medical draft would be ready in 2005, men and women age 20-44. (This draft like the current combat draft for men 18-25, is already the law of the land)

The secret http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/<a >Issue Paper actually proposes being able to call a SKILLS and MEDICAL DRAFT WITHOUT calling a combat draft.


The biggest difference of course is that the RANGEL PROTEST BILL will NEVER happen and the NEW BUSH DRAFT has already begun gearing up for 2005.

SKILLS DRAFT AND NEW COMBAT DRAFT TIMELINE

Feb. 11 2003 - Top-level meeting between the head of the SSS and Deputy Undersecretary Abell in charge of Personnel and Readiness of the DoD on the SKILLS DRAFT. This is the meeting of the secret Issue Paper, revealed by the Freedom of Information Act in May. The SSS goes back encouraged enough to do some more planning.

Summer 2003 - Drive to start filling DRAFT BOARD vacancies by asking current board members to find new ones.

Fall 2003 - DoD announces critical skills shortages in linguists, computer experts and engineers. SSS Director Brodsky orders the designing of the SKILLS DRAFT procedures, the reg card and the massive database needed to track every young American under 35 and their skills. Brodsky, who "plays" JE McNeil and other anti-draft leaders by calling them regularly and shmoozing them, lies to McNeil telling her that in February of 2003 the SSS had to "justify their existence" before a hostile committee--when in reality the SSS and DOD were having the SKILLS DRAFT meeting and he himself had just started designing the new system and making it his top priority.

Sept 2003 - Draft board recruitment ad goes up on Web.

November 2003 - Draft board ad scrubbed!

Dec. 2003 - Brodsky announces the SKILLS DRAFT to be the "top priority' of the SSS in newsletter and tells of rapid progress to come.

March 13, 2004 - Word of SKILLS DRAFT leaks out in a SF Chronicle story and the SSS admits it and tells reporters it’s just a planning contingency. In an attempt to throw the press off, the SSS also says it would take 2 years to gear up and work out the kinks for the SKILLS DRAFT and that there is no funding for it. Eric Rosenberg, the reporter on the story, finds out about the Feb. 11 meeting Issue Paper and files a Freedom of Information Act request to get it.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/13/MNG905K1BC1.DTL


May 1, 2004 – Article on SKILLS DRAFT leaves out key points of how skills conscription would be expanded to fill labor shortages throughout Dept of Homeland Security, 1/3 of government, how the SKILLS DRAFT can be called without a combat draft, how SKILLS INDUCTEES will be inducted within a mere 90 days of reauthorization, that the SSS wanted to “promptly” change the very MISSION of the SSS and so on. The article does, however, reveal many major point of sweeping plan. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/171522_draft01.html

Sept 13, 2004 – Issue Paper agenda memo of key Feb 2003 meeting posted on the Web at http://www.blatanttruth.org/selective_service091304.pdf sample:
"while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis if too few volunteer."

2004 – MOCK DRAFT LOTTERY HELD, SAMPLE MEDICAL EXAM REPORT ORDERS ISSUED TO MAIL LIST. Alternative Service geared up for first time in 31 years! Papers to place Conscientious Objectors with employers actually drawn up. SSS brought up to 95% operational capability, full Medical draft capability set for 2005, all DRAFT BOARD vacancies filled by Spring 2005! On March 31, 2005, the SSS Director must report to the Congress that the entire system is primed and ready to open 2,000 draft board offices and start inducting within 75 days, or June 15, 2005.

From Family Circle July 13
COULD YOUR CHILD BE DRAFTED?

http://www.gjusa.com/news/pressReleaseDetails.jsp?id=4141


According to retired U.S. Army Colonel David Hackworth, a military analyst and one of the most decorated officers in the army, the U.S. military is now so shorthanded that a whopping 40 percent of the 135,000 troops being rotated into Iraq are National Guard members and reservists.

-snip-

Both the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld deny that a draft is in the works, yet there are signs to the contrary. For example, last fall, Presidential advisor Karl Rove polled Republican members of Congress on how they felt about he draft. They said they’d support the president. Also, last fall, the Defense Department’s website posted an ad for local Selective Service System board members, and according to the Selective Service Annual Performance Plan for 2004, before next March 31 draft boards must be potentially operational within two and a half months of a return to conscription. Increasingly, members of Congress, including Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), are calling for a draft.

BUSH '04 = DRAFT '05

KERRY '04 = PNAC OUT THE DOOR?

http://blatanttruth.org/draft.php





PRINT THE PDF AND HANG EVERYWHERE: http://somnamblst.tripod.com/draftalert.pdf

[Dems Will Win]

3. Thanks J's Mem, here's some more. ASK ME ANYTHING!

BUSH HIDDEN AGENDA ON NEW SKILLS DRAFT REVEALED BY FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Selective Service Plan to Register “Virtually Every Young American” Under 35, Male or Female

On May 1, the Seattle Post Intelligencer published an article about a document they received through the Freedom of Information Act called “Selective Service Eyes Women’s Draft”. It also revealed that the SSS has been “designing procedures” for the implementation of a non-combat “Skills Draft” since Fall of 2003. This is not the protest combat draft bill of Charles Rangel—which has not a prayer of passing. This document is an actual internal meeting agenda between the Pentagon and the head of the Selective Service on the very future of registration and the draft. (Web site: )

The new Skills Draft described in detail in this FOI agenda document would change the core mission of the Selective Service. It would require that “virtually every young American”, male and female ages 18-34, to register their Skills on an SSS compliance form that will be distributed to all Post Offices. Under the usual penalty of $250,000 and imprisonment for not registering, all young Americans will be required to list all the occupations they are proficient in to fill labor shortages throughout nearly the entire government—not just the Department of Defense. For the first time, the Selective Service would change its mission and draft for the Department of Homeland Security and many other federal, state and local agencies.

This document is real, having been acknowledged by the DoD and the SSS when they told reporter Eric Rosenberg they were “designing procedures” for the Skills Draft based on the current Medical Draft, and deciding on the database fields that would be needed. But Acting Director of the SSS Brodsky has said the Skills Draft is the “top priority” for 2004.

Rove and Bush are of course not so foolish as to talk openly about reinstating the draft before the election. But this new FOI-recovered document and the actions that the SSS admits they are taking in 2004 proves that at the very least, a Skills Draft and Medical Draft are being quietly readied for 2005.

From the FOI document, we now know that on February 11, 2003, Charles Abell, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and William Carr, Deputy Undersecretary for Military Personnel Policy, met with Lewis Brodsky, the Acting Director of the Selective Service and some other officials. This is the highest-level meeting you could have about the Selective Service, outside of Rumsfeld and his inner circle. The proposed changes discussed in this meeting include:

- Allowing a non-combat draft for shortages in critical skills, without calling a combat draft. This non-combat skills draft would induct men and women ages 18 to 34.

- Fill labor shortages of all kinds throughout not only DoD but the Dept. of Homeland Security and other agencies as well, especially high-paying professionals like computer networking specialist or linguist. However, truck drivers, cooks and several hundred other skills are also considered “critical”.

- Create a single-point, all-inclusive database, in which every young person would be forced to send in a “self-declaration”—like an IRS form—of all of their critical skills, chosen from a long list o f several hundred occupations like the Armed Forces Specialty Code with Skills Identifier. The usual penalties of imprisonment and/or a $250,000 fine would apply to all non-registrants.

- Reduce induction time from being able to deliver all inductees in 193 days down to just 90 days for skills inductees.

At the end of the Feb. 11 Agenda document there are 3 Options. Option 1 was to maintain the status quo of male-only registration and not-quite ready Medical Draft. Option 2 was to put the whole Selective Service into “Deep Standby” with reduced funding. From all indications, and the statements of the SSS itself, the Pentagon has decided to go ahead with Option 3a and Option 3b, which reads:

-snip-

3. Restructure the SSS and shift its peacetime focus to accommodate DoD’s most likely requirements in a crisis. Plan for conducting a more likely draft of individual with special and critical skills.


a. Minimum requirement: SSS mission guidance and time lines must be redefined promptly by DoD to allow more relevant pre-mobilization planning and funding for the possibility of a critical skills draft at M+90 or sooner (M+ is the number of days from authorization of a draft to delivery of the manpower to the DoD –ed.). Peacetime registration of men 18 through 25 would continue, but consideration would also be given to identifying men with certain critical skills among these year-of-birth groupings. A post-mobilization plan would also be devised and computer programming accomplished for a full-blown critical skills draft. The HCPDS program is completed, brought to the forefront of SSS readiness planning, and tested through exercises…

b. Expanded pre-mobilization requirement. SSS peacetime registration expanded to include women and men, 18 through 34 years old, and collects information on critical skills within these year-of-birth groupings...

-snip-

(There's a link to the Agenda memo in the post above)

These are just the options given to the DoD in that initial meeting held in February of 2003. Since then Karl Rove secretly polled the GOP Caucus in the Congress on the draft in the Fall of 2003 (Family Circle, July 13, 2004 “Could Your Child Be Drafted?”). The Republicans said they would reinstate the draft if Bush asked for it. Around the same time, the DoD announced a looming shortage of critical skills including linguists, computer experts and engineers. The SSS admits that it then began actively designing the Skills Draft data fields and compliance cards that would be needed to have several tens of million of people register for both the Skills and the Medical Draft. Acting Director Brodsky also said in the end-of the year SSS newsletter that developing the Skills Draft is the “top priority” of the Selective Service for 2004.

Although it would require changes in current draft law, the far-reaching proposal and their more recent actions shows how far the Republicans are willing to go to plan and prepare for a huge expansion of the draft. If enacted after a Bush re-election—probably within weeks of November 2nd—the Skills Draft and Medical Draft proposed in this FOI-recovered document would change America as we know it.

The Pentagon is suffering from immediate labor shortages. Recently, the inactive Ready Reserve had to be called up for the first time since the Gulf War to fill 5,600 job shortages in the Armed Forces. DoD said in the recent IRR callup “20% of the call-ups are truck drivers, 12% are supply specialists who can use a computer to track supplies, 10% are Humvee mechanics, 7% are administrative specialists and 6% are combat engineers” (USA Today, August 8, 2004).

Despite Rumsfeld saying the draft is not needed, this is the same neo-con administration that has repeatedly lied to and misled the American people. Draft-age youth and their families are left looking at a “long, hard slog” in Iraq (Rumsfeld secret memo), the neo-con plans to invade still more nations, and then having to take Rumsfeld and Cheney’s word not to worry about the draft, that they “are not considering it at this time.”

Link: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/171522_draft01.html

A draft or recruitment could be for any one of the skills you self-declare on the compliance form, not your current or primary skill. This greatly increases your chance of being drafted if you are 18-34.

This proposed expansion of the draft is primarily proposed, according to the agenda document, because the cost of providing contract professionals, like computer network specialists, would be “prohibitive”. In this way, the proposed Skills Draft would help preserve Bush’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

That’s the new Skills Draft and the secret document behind it. But what about the Combat Draft?

Selective Service has been registering young men for a potential combat draft for over twenty years and at any moment the President can go to Congress and ask them to reauthorize conscription for the male combat draft for ages 18-25. It doesn’t take much to imagine a re-elected Bush going to Congress and saying “We cannot cut and run from Iraq or the War on Terror. I need you to reauthorize conscription.”

And they would not have to pass a whole new draft law to do it. All that is needed is a “trigger resolution”, which could be passed in the dead of night—and bingo! No debate, no regular bill, just a short resolution passed quickly and the draft for men 18 to 25 is back.

For 31 years, the Conscientious Objector system, called the Alternative Service, has lain dormant. The 2004 Selective Service Performance Plan calls for this to be brought up to speed and to be ready to decide cases and place COs in the Alternative Service by July 6, 2005 (96 days after March 31, 2005). The SSS is even going so far as to draw up the SOPs, the Standard Operating Procedures which identify local employers eligible to receive cheap AS workers and to also draw up the actual MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding the employer must sign to get their CO workers and allow their mandatory attendance to be monitored. Along with the re-staffing of all 10,000 vacancies on Draft and Appeals Boards around the country, this was the last obstacle to be hurdled before the draft could actually be ready for quick activation under the law in 2005.

Taken singly, each of the clues indicating the return and expansion of the draft might seem insignificant but when you add them all up with what the Selective Service is doing to gear up the combat draft to an unprecedented level of readiness, a clear pattern emerges. The inescapable conclusion is that a Bush re-election will see not only a Skills Draft and a Medical Draft, but a return of the Combat Draft as well.

In sharp contrast to all this preparation for a Spring 2005 draft by Bush, Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry has proposed a military plan that rejects any draft. By adding 20,000 active-duty combat soldiers and 20,000 active “reconstruction specialists”. At a Wisconsin high school, Kerry pledged in June, 2004, that the draft would be “absolutely unnecessary” because he would have a reasonable foreign policy. When asked in April by 130 college editors in a conference call as to whether he would support a draft, John Kerry said unequivocally: “No. No draft” and he has criticized the use of the Guard and Reserve—and now the Individual Ready Reserve—as a “back-door draft”.

Kerry plans to spend an additional $7 billion to strengthen the Volunteer Army in what is essentially a “No-Draft Plan”. Moreover, Kerry is strongly opposed to the neo-con plan revealed in Wes Clark’s book, Winning Modern Wars, in which Clark was told by a senior Pentagon official that invasions of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan and Somalia were still to come over the next three years. Kerry told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that he would double Special Forces and that they would catch Osama Bin Laden. Kerry said recently that President Bush focused on Saddam Hussein and that he would have focused on catching or killing Osama Bin Laden.

[MsUnderstood]

4. A female friend of mine

Was told she had to sign up for selective service (she is going back to college). She was pretty confused about it and so I went to the Selective Service website which says nothing about needing women to sign up.

That to me says the government is getting pretty good about SELECTIVELY updating information on the web. So if you tell someone "the draft is coming for your daughters" and the go to the government site, they will think you are some liberal, paranoid nut case. . .scary, isn't it?