Draft Equipment to Be Tested
The Selective Service System is planning to test equipment and procedures that would be used in a draft. Cryptically referred to as the Area Office Mobilization Prototype Exercise, the test would not take place until 2009, and could be canceled because of budget cuts.
The Selective Service System is planning to test equipment and procedures that would be used in a draft. Cryptically referred to as the Area Office Mobilization Prototype Exercise, the test would not take place until 2009, and could be canceled because of budget cuts.
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...AP via Common Dreams:
The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery, which hasn’t been run since 1998.
The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.
Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that “society would benefit” if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn’t have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support reinstituting a draft.
The Selective Service “readiness exercise” would test the system that randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective Service director for operations and chief information officer.
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Beto O’Rourke aims to rein in the Pentagon with a nationwide “war tax.” It’s a plan that reeks of faux progressivism and policy minimalism.
With all due respect, there is a better way to imperil the U.S. military’s imperial project than to reinstate the draft.
Switching from all-volunteer to mandatory military service could force Americans to reconsider their ever-expanding empire.
Like labor unions before them, veterans and soldiers organized to win benefits millions now rely on.
That sound of doomsday you hear in the distance is not "ka-boom." It's "ka-ching."
A military increasingly divorced from ordinary Americans blends soldiers with privatized mercenaries, empowers commanders to cash in on retirement and wields a quasi-missionary imperial force in at least 135 countries.
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