Draft Discussed in Senate
May 22nd, 2008Via: Military.com:
In an exchange sure to send ripples of anxiety through the all-volunteer military, the Senate’s senior defense spending member asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen if it is time to “consider reinstituting the draft.”
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, asked Gates and Mullen the question he said no one wants to ask: “Is the cost of maintaining an all-volunteer force becoming unsustainable and, secondly, do we need to consider reinstituting the draft.”
Inouye cited the ever-increasing pay and benefits paid to active and reserve service members, noting that it now costs an estimated $126,000 per service member.
Gates and Mullen both said they thought the current volunteer force was the finest the U.S. has ever fielded. Gates said he “personally” believes that “it is worth the cost.”
Mullen was not quite as sanguine.
“A future that argues for, or results in, continuous escalation of those costs does not bode well for a military of this size,” he said, adding it the rising costs will eventually force the US to shrink the military, spend less on new weapons or to “curtail operations.” The question of pay and benefits for the U.S. military “is the top issue we need to come to terms with,” Mullen said.
This marks the first time a senior member of Congress has seriously discussed reinstituting the draft in almost two years. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, called for reinstituting the draft in November 2006.
Tuesday’s discussion occurred during debate over the pending $70 billion emergency supplemental spending bill. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that the bill was unlikely to move before Labor Day, requiring a one month extension of war spending.
“Military being spread too thin” — add it to the list of problems that will be conveniently solved (i.e., with no political backlash for our “leaders”) when 9/11 II occurs.
Hi: This is regular annual news right? I believe that I have read that this always happens every year, nothing going on here move along.
Once bunker busters are dropping, albeit that will not be on any purported nuke facilities, and then when discussion of a draft happens, I will believe that something material has changed.
Steve,
Staff Reporter
THN (tin foil hat news network)
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’m all for the Draft. Like the other “bubbles” that have been engineered by the suits; economic, energy wise, etc, the war bubble is one that needs to burst. The U.S. war machine has a stank to it that is worse than a bad septic system smell coming up into your house.
A draft might be the B-12 vitamin injection the U.S. populace needs to get out of their myopic farking barko-lounging tv dwelling gas guzzling universe faster than cutting off a credit card.
But these numbnuts who are balking at the cost of $124 k per soldier are blindly insane. That’s probably a fraction of what it costs for 1, ONE surgery after a soldier’s limbs have been blown to bits. Who is giving Congress the true costs of the war in Iraq?
This is ridiculous.
The Vietnam War would still be a war going on today if it weren’t for the draft.
There’s too much money and profit from war, and when folks finally take up their anti-war staffs and walk, I hope it isn’t because of a dead child in a coffin.
Part of me would love to see them (try) to reinstate the draft. Imagine dragging all the chickenhawks out from behind their keyboards!
Not to mention that they’d drag in a lot of people who don’t possess “military DNA” (people who would otherwise be harmless), and give them training in guns and ordinance.
Yeah; that won’t have ANY negative repercussions…
dermot, they don’t need to drag the nerds out from behind their keyboards, DoD has developed their own games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLLa3GkJcJ0
Thats a long video but well worth watching all the way through.
Couple that info with the anticipated surge in UAV and remote warfare expenditures, and a grim vision of the future starts to reveal itself. An increasingly isolated elite buffered from the public by detached gamers on doritos and coke life support.