here. As all right-thinking folks know, governments never lie. And when they do, they can count on clever Americans in Oxford to cover their tracks.
UPDATE: A reader asks: "Do you really think they made up the 20-year thing for the draft boards?" This took be my surprise. I wrote back: "The 20-year terms of draft board members isn't the issue, though I suppose it's worth noting that if board members started those term in 1981, it's a bit odd that it's only in late 2003 that the Defense Department is rushing to fill their slots. (Why not in 2001, or 2000 in anticipation?) But put that aside. The real question is who in their right mind assigns any credence to statements by Secretary of War Rumsfeld [as the department used to be called in more honest days] saying they won't reinstate a draft? Given the military staffing problems we're now confronting--which was the main point, I thought, of the Salon article--it seems plausible that the chicken hawks in the current administration are thinking about a draft as one alternative--after election day, of course. What was utterly childish about the posting in question was the quotation of governmental officials denying any such intent as though that were probative, conjoined with the failure to consider the logistical considerations that make a need for more men in uniform apparent. Even the absurd OxBlog folks are commenting on the need for more troops, confident, no doubt, that their blood won't be shed."
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