LOL!!!

Haven’t taken Fallujah yet.

Up to speed on miltary doctrine. The entire Iraq war goes against every single piece of accepted military doctrine taught in our war colleges for the last 50 years.

Rummy and Bush fired every respectable general who stood in their way until they had Tommy Franks, who happens to be a good guy but no great military mind.

As for suing, reservists do that sometimes when they are called up. My own brother considered suing when his unit was sent to the Balkans during the Clinton Admin. It’s a fruitless endeavor; once you sign on the line and swear the oath, they own you until they say they don’t. There is not a single court in the land that does not understand this. Summary dismissal is the usual outcome.

And, can you explain how the military can legally obligate people to come back to serve if they have served all time required by law? Where did the label “Ready Reserve” come from, for that matter?

Could the contract they signed have a clause putting them in the Ready Reserve, letting the government decide if they are required to serve longer, perhaps? If so, the sentence was incorrect.

Edromar stated, “Bush has already initiated a draft of ready reservists who have served all the time they are required to by current law.” This is only a “draft” because Kerry likes to call it one, and because it helps Kerry in his fear-mongering mission. The “ready reserve” means people who are ready to be called up, just as reservists are. Sorry, but the ability to call them up does mean that the law permits them to be required to serve longer, so the phrase, “who have served all the time they are required to by current law,” is incorrect.

But, more to the point, there is no way this “backdoor draft” could ever morph into the Rangle-inspired draft Kerry is talking about. Why? Because, unlike high school students, the Ready Reserve is made up of people who have already gone through the year-and-a-half of training that would be required of a new recruit.

Think about it, what is the sense in drafting people that won’t be ready for service for a year-and-a-half?

Oh, and I thought that Halliburton is getting rich off of handling the support-side duties that servicemen used to do (like runnning cafeterias). The military knew this when it assigned various people to combat and non-combat posts. You volunteer for duty, but the military gets the final word on your actual sassignment.

And, finally, I remember the military sending me a postcard the month I turned 18 so I could register with Selective Service. After that, I received recruiting material from all branches of the military. No Child Left Behind isn’t going to open any floodgates that aren’t already open.

It is patently obvious that Bush could not get a draft at this time. However, there is a more likely scenario by which Bush can get a draft to enable him to put enough men on the ground to “secure” Iraq. He can, and will (if he gets another term) stir up nuclear war fear hysteria against Iran to enable him to bpmb nuclear facilities in Iran. That, he knows of course, would immediately mobilize Iran to attack our troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq. As Iraq brings our troops in Afghanistan within a circle, Bush counts on being able to get Congressional authorization for a war. The obvious need for troops to fight a 2 front war against a million men in Iraq and Afghanistan and drive them back into Iran will make a draft necessary and create sup[port for it among the numbskulls in the US who support Duh?bya. The only way to avoid this scenario and its ensuing draft is to defeat the dolt.

Actually, Bush has already initiated a draft of ready reservists who have served all the time they are required to by current law. But Bush is counting on his edict that even those who have resigned after completing their required service must remain in uniform as long as their unit is in Iraq. Over 800 have refused that call and some are suing the governmnet for trying to make them go. Bush has already imposed a back door draft.

I am advising my daughter in med school to seek an internship in Canada so she can stay out of the grip of the Bush de facto draft for people with skills he needs to propagate his impending pre-emptive wars. There is no end to foreign governments far more dangerous to us than were either Iraq or Afghanistan. But Bush would not be satisfied as long as he could keep popular among his warmongering fundamentalist supporters by starting wars one after the other, never being able to win any but keeping out country in a perpetual state of warfar–as if we were founding a Pax Americana formed on the pattern of the Pax Romana in which there was never real peace, but not enough strength to its enemies to totally endanger it for centuries. Only by defeating the rabid Republicans so thoroughly that theywill drive all the fundamentalists, neo-cons and militarists out, will our country be free of their threats–and their lies that they are not threats. If we really believe their lies we are the ones to blame for letting them get away with it. The brain dead zombies who follow in the death wake of Duh?bya can not be held responsible. But we who have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the minds to understand are responsible if we leave any Constitutional rock unturned and not thrown at those enemies of the people.

Our armed forces are heavily specialized today. The ratio of support personnel to actual combat soldiers is at its highest ratio in our military�s history. Upwards of 50% of our soldiers are not qualified to fire a rifle.

FROM COLONEL DAVID H. HACKWORTH

Uncle Sam Will Soon Want Your Kids

Recently, when John Kerry brought up the possibility of a return to the draft, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld was quick to respond that Kerry was full of it.

But my take is that Kerry is right on the mark. Not only because Rummy has been flat wrong on every major military call regarding Iraq, but because this is a war that won�t be won by smart weapons or the sledgehammer firepower we see every night on the tube.

Right now � with both our regular and Reserve soldiers stretched beyond the breaking point � our all-volunteer force is tapping out. If our overseas troop commitments continue at the present rate or climb higher, there won�t be enough Army and Marine grunts to do the job. And thin, overworked units, from Special Forces teams to infantry battalions, lose fights.

Clearly, this war against worldwide, hardcore Islamic believers will be a massive military marathon, the longest and most far-flung in our country�s history. By Christmas, more troops could be needed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wherever the radical Islamic movement is growing stronger, from the Horn of Africa to Morocco, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen and across Europe � remember Spain?! � to Asia.

Accordingly, we need to bring our ground-fighting and support units to about the strength they were before the Soviet Union imploded, especially since the proper ratio of counterinsurgent-to-insurgent in places like the Middle East should be around 15 to 1. You don�t have to be a Ph.D. in military personnel to conclude we need more boots on the ground.

FROM ABC NEWS ONLINE

US army wants females in combat zones

The US Army is negotiating with the Pentagon’s civilian leaders a plan to eliminate a women-in-combat ban so it can place mixed-sex support companies within warfighting units, starting with a division going to Iraq in January, says The Washington Times.

Citing unnamed defence department sources, the newspaper said Army blueprints for a lighter force of 10 active divisions included plans for postings of mixed-sex units.

A spokesman said the Army is now in discussions with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s staff to see whether the 10-year-old ban in this one area should be lifted, The Times said.

FROM THE NEW JERSEY STAR-LEDGER

Charles Thomas tended to wounded soldiers on the sweltering killing fields of Vietnam, helped hurricane victims in Honduras and oversaw finances for soldiers in Bosnia.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the 58-year-old Army National Guard command sergeant major will leave his wife, Jeanette, their 11-year-old Maltese, Pebbles, walk through the door of his Old Bridge home one final time and head to Iraq.

“I don’t want to leave my wife, but I have to go,” Thomas said during an interview last week at his house, which the couple is selling. “I made her a deal. I promised her this is my last tour of duty, and she gets a new house.”

Thomas is among a group of soldiers age 50 and over being called to active duty . Like many, he is a “citizen soldier,” a member of the National Guard or Reserves, where soldiers serve part-time. They tend to be older than their active-duty counterparts and are increasingly being deployed overseas to augment active-duty troops.

Of the 160,000 men and women deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 4,119 are 50 or older. At a time in life when most people are looking forward to retirement or eyeing Florida real estate, these soldiers are leaving behind corporate jobs and grandkids. Some even voluntarily postpone military retirement to go to war.

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

WASHINGTON The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelmed the military’s medical corps.
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In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted.
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On the one hand, the report said, the Selective Service System should establish contacts in advance with medical societies, hospitals, schools of medicine and nursing, managed care organizations, rural health care providers and the editors of medical journals and trade publications.
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On the other hand, it said, such contacts must be limited, low key and discreet because “overtures from Selective Service to the medical community will be seen as precursors to a draft,” and that could alarm the public.

FROM THE AUSTRALIAN

US facing 20,000 insurgents in Iraq

AMERICAN officials are drawing an alarming new portrait of the insurgency in Iraq, showing it has significantly more fighters and far greater financial resources than had previously been estimated.

The New York Times reported yesterday that when foreign fighters and the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were counted with home-grown insurgents, the hard-core resistance numbered between 8000 and 12,000 people.

That tally swelled to more than 20,000 when active sympathisers or covert accomplices were included.

FROM THE SUN HERALD.COM

U.S.: Soldiers Failed to Report for Duty

WASHINGTON – More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with Army orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army said Friday. That is more than one-third of the total who were told to report to a mobilization station by Oct. 17.

Three weeks ago the number stood at 622 amid talk that any who refused to report for duty could be declared Absent Without Leave. Refusing to report for duty normally would lead to AWOL charges, but the Army is going out of its way to resolve these cases as quietly as possible.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1219/p13s02-legn.html
http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14073&c=253