Word: draft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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POLITICS OF THE DRAFT: Bush says he won't reinstate it; 42% of those polled by TIME don't believe...
...given the scale of the U.S. commitment in Iraq and the range of potential conflicts beyond it, a few military experts are beginning to say the U.S. may someday reach a point where--no matter who is elected in November--it will have no choice but to reconsider the draft. General John Keane, who retired last year as the Army's No. 2 officer, says the continued success of the all-volunteer military is not guaranteed. "The volunteer force was the most significant military event of the 20th century," he told TIME. "But it's not preordained that it will...
...next August, but meanwhile the U.S. military is trapped in a nation-building marathon that the Army is ill prepared to carry out. Among some Americans, the prospect of an open-ended U.S. commitment in Iraq has heightened anxieties that manpower shortages may lead the Pentagon to reinstitute the draft. The heat of the presidential campaign has kept the rumors alive, which may prove costly to George W. Bush...
...TIME poll taken before the second debate, 42% of those surveyed said they believe that if Bush is re-elected he will reinstitute the draft, while only 21% believe Kerry would. Pentagon officials, field commanders and both presidential candidates insist a draft is neither necessary nor desirable and that the U.S. can maintain its commitments with an all-volunteer Army. "We're not going to have a draft--period," Bush said in last Friday's debate. Yet speculation about the looming return of conscription has become so rampant that House Republicans last week tried to dispel the rumors by forcing...
...little more than a year ago, an obscure Defense Department website called defendamerica.mil posted a routine notice from the Selective Service System (SSS) seeking to fill vacancies on the nation's 2,000 draft boards. The boards do little these days--the last draft ended 31 years ago--but they are maintained in case a cataclysmic event makes conscription necessary again...