From Congress.org (http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=5834001&content_dir=ua_congressorg):

There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program's initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 -- just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately.

$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005. Selective Service must report to Bush on March 31, 2005 that the system, which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation. Please see http://www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html to view the sss annual performance plan - fiscal year 2004.

The pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide. Though this is an unpopular election year topic, military experts and influential members of congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld's prediction of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan [and a permanent state of war on "terrorism"] proves accurate, the U.S. may have no choice but to draft.

Congress brought twin bills, S. 89 and HR 163 forward this year, entitled the Universal National Service Act of 2003, "to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons [age 18--26] in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes." These active bills currently sit in the committee on armed services.

Dodging the draft will be more difficult than those from the Vietnam era.

College and Canada will not be options. In December 2001, Canada and the U.S. signed a "smart border declaration," which could be used to keep would-be draft dodgers in. Signed by Canada's minister of foreign affairs, John Manley, and U.S. Homeland Security director, Tom Ridge, the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other things, a "pre-clearance agreement" of people entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of their current semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.

Even those voters who currently support US actions abroad may still object to this move, knowing their own children or grandchildren will not have a say about whether to fight. Not that it should make a difference, but this plan, among other things, eliminates higher education as a shelter and includes women in the draft.

The public has a right to air their opinions about such an important decision.

Please send this on to all the friends, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and cousins that you know. Let your children know too - it's their future, and they can be a powerful voice for change!

Please also contact your representatives to ask them why they aren't telling their constituents about these bills - and contact newspapers and other media outlets to ask them why they're not covering this important story.

Any chance they'll eliminate being a politician's kid as a shelter?

Hmm, no Canada this time? Well Australia has always seemed sufficiently American to me, I'll see about heading there until this whole war craze blows over. Though I've still got another ace up my sleeve, I wonder if by "All young Americans" They mean even the gay ones. We'll have to put that to the test!

I seriously doubt that anything is going to be done with this before November. As if Bush wasn't teetering on a fine enough line as it is; Reinstating the draft would just kill him in the next election.

Any chance they'll eliminate being a politician's kid as a shelter?

It's rather unlikely.

On Edit: Something strikes me as an important question - How much will the mandatory service cost annually?

Seriously ... that's a lot of servicepeople to train, outfit, and accommodate, especially in the face of perpetual warfare.

There comes a point where I understand the idea of reinstating the draft. That we got into Iraq wrongly becomes irrelevant when one faces the question of how to actually protect the country (as opposed to merely saying you are) if our military ranks dwindle to dysfunction.

But running mandatory service--if "Oregon" was a country unto itself, I could understand running mandatory service. But in a country of 300,000,000, it seems more a herald of our decline, as we spend more and more on sharpening our blades and less and less on healing the wounds they bring.

Of course, the "less and less" is merely an historical sarcasm of mine. Life could indeed surprise me in the form of running mandatory service that actually works toward a positive goal.

Also, I could be overreacting insofar as I say "running" mandatory service in the sense that we're in a perpetual war (War on Terror) which apparently involves massive invasions of countries off the beaten track but relevant to the New American Century (e.g. Iraq). I just don't see an end to the conscription period. Perhaps the new Pax Americana indicates that peace is coercion, and not cooperation.

Lastly, I'll just say that the day we resort to press gangs in the streets .... Depending on what the WoT does, the first reports of American press-gang conscription could come in the next ten years.

There's an alternative service option given on the SSS site here (http://www.sss.gov/FSconsobj.htm) but considering someone else gets to decide whether or not you're eligible, I wouldn't count on it. Were I between 17 and 25 now I'd start making plans to leave the country. By the time there's a draft for the express purpose of oppressing others while stealing from them, the country is not worth living in anymore anyway.

The public has a right to air their opinions about such an important decision.

The public has aired their opinion. They elected Bush and implicitly gave him the go-ahead to liberate Iraq's oil. The majority are willing to sacrifice other Americans--even their children--to keep the oil. Were I draft age I wouldn't hold my breath hoping the public will change its mind now.

The public has aired their opinion. They elected Bush and implicitly gave him the go-ahead to liberate Iraq's oil. The majority are willing to sacrifice other Americans--even their children--to keep the oil. Were I draft age I wouldn't hold my breath hoping the public will change its mind now.
Yes, but on false pretenses that are only now just starting to be discussed in the media.

I'm not going to start a debate on who won the 2000 election, but look at it this way: assume that Bush and Gore each got 50% of the vote. Only 50 million people voted in the 2000 election - that's between 1/5th and 1/6th of the US population. Since each received about 50% of the vote, only between 1/10th and 1/12th of the population actually voted for either candidate. This is nowhere NEAR a majority.

Bush (or Gore) may have won the election, but that may or may not be what the majority wanted - there's no way to know.

10% of the nation voting is plenty for determining the majority opinion. Even 5% of 100 million voters will get you to within 0.01% of how all the voters would have voted.

For example, if 100 million registered voters are split 60/40, say, on an issue then any 5% of them that you choose at random will be split 60/40 on average on that issue, with a margin of difference that is less than 0.01% (the split of the subset might differ from the outcome of all voters by as much as 60.01/39.99 or 59.99/40.01).

If the voters are split 50/50 on an issue as they were between Bush and Gore in 2000, the public is better off to flip a coin and save the cost of an election. Even if everyone who could vote did vote, the split could then be expected to be 50/50 to within 0.01%.

This is why Gallup.com can with great accuracy predict who will win the presidency by polling only 4,000 people. The result is within 2.5% of the outcome expected if all voters voted. Currently they are predicting another coin flip, this time between Bush and Kerry, if Nader is again on the ballot in all the close-contest states.

Nobody stole the election in 2000. The Republicans use every trick in the book to keep Democrats from voting and vice versa. (Speaking of that, thousands of “felons” are again being booted off the Florida polls now. That the Republicans can do this every 4 years without consequence shows that they aren’t doing anything criminal.) The election came down to a coin flip and Bush won the flip. The public spoke then, the public speaks today (through Gallup) and half the people (whether by choice or by ignorance, like voting for Nader) want offensive war and the draft needed to sustain that war.

Lay off the PCP, it really fries your mind.....

There will be no draft just to say it simply