John McCain Supports Bringing Back The Draft

Now if there hasn’t been a reason not to vote for John McCain in some peoples’ minds, maybe there is now. Maybe young men between the ages of 19 and 26 will think again about pushing in that pin, pulling that lever or bubbling in that circle for John McCain.

Because John McCain has in his own inimitable way, admitted that he agrees with the notion of reinstituting the military draft.

Not only young men, mind you. What about parents and grand parents of these young men?

Now here is a You Tube video showing McCain at a town hall meeting in Las Cruces, where he made this admission:



Now a McCain spokesman put out a statement a day later categorically denying that McCain supports bringing back the draft.

Yet when you look at how McCain replied to his questioner, you do have to wonder if that is true. Outside of the draft comment the questioner didn’t present anything for McCain to agree to except for her observations about how veterans are being treated and what will that mean for future military recruitment quotas. The gist of her question was given how we treat veterans, how will we be able to kill or capture Osama bin Laden if there are fewer and fewer recruits. Given all of that, the commenter observed “If we don’t reenact the draft, I don’t think we’ll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.” And you all saw what McCain's reply was.

“Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said.”

Now that’s a double negative which we educators hate because the meaning becomes hazy, which was probably McCain’s intent. So let me redact his reply, excising the double negative:

Ma’am, let me say that I agree with everything you said.

He went on to quote George Washington who, in 1789 observed this: those who sign up for military service in the future will do so based upon how they see the country treat its present-day soldiers.

So you see, he is not agreeing with the woman’s observations about how shabbily our veterans are being treated, he is agreeing with the woman’s major premise, that this will impact the numbers of future volunteers.

Reinstituting the draft is just a small, very small, leap in logic.

And remember, McCain is on record as saying that he would consider reinstituting a draft that is fair. In a September 27, 2007 New Hampshire town hall meeting, he said this:

“There has never been a draft that I have ever heard of, since World War II that was fair. What we’ve done is we find rich people find a way out and lower income people are the ones that serve. So, if you could design . . . I might consider it . . . I don’t think it’s necessary . . .but I might consider it if you could design a draft where everybody equally would serve. But it just
doesn’t happen.”

So now we have a quote from McCain agreeing that having a military draft may be necessary, and the only way we will send Osama bin Laden to the nether regions, and one saying that he might consider a draft if it is fair.

So I really don’t think they can argue their way out of this one, I really don’t. So rather than try to do just that, they categorically deny that he meant what we all heard him say.

Fancy that. A Republican denying what is plainly the truth.

Oh, and by the way, speaking of getting out of the draft, need I again remind everyone that Texas’ junior US Senator, John Cornyn, is one of those people that finagled a way out of being drafted? While thousands of his age mates put it on the line and had their birthdays pulled out of a spinning drum, John Cornyn took advantage of a poorly understood and largely unannounced loophole in the selective service act that still allowed students to file for 2S student deferments even after the lottery was instituted.

I took my chances on the lottery, and my number was 296. Cornyn didn’t. When he and hundreds of other young men born on February 2, 1952 drew number 28, Cornyn stayed home while others went to war.

Oh, but that’s OK, he more than made up for this by voting against providing body armor to our soldiers in Iraq.

McCain and Cornyn: Two John’s we don’t need in DC anymore.

Rick Noriega On Daily Kos’ Front Page; Cornyn Has A Story There, Too.

So I was just surfing around looking at the blogs today when I happened onto Daily Kos, and saw that Kos had a huge article on Texas Senatorial candidate Rick Noreiga, right on the front page, but you can find it here, too. I read the whole thing – OK, I skipped the stuff that Richard Morrison wrote on him earlier this year on the original Draft Rick Noriega blog.

Kos wrote a good piece that makes a strong comparison between Rick Noriega's campaign and the races of Tester of Montana and Webb of Virginia. Two states that are very red, but the voters there went with the Democratic challengers rather than the Republican incumbents.

Now what you won’t see on the front page of Daily Kos, at least not yet anyway, is a posting by Libby Shaw. It’s buried back there so just click here for a very interesting read on whether or not John Cornyn pulled a fast one and eluded the draft during the Vietnam Era.

John Cornyn, who is 55, would have been 18 when the Selective Service System’s method of calling up cannon fodder for military service changed to a fair and equitable lottery system. Before that, college age men could escape The Draft by staying in college with their 2-S deferments. In 1971, Cornyn at 19, and all 19 year old men in America, participated in the 1971 lottery. Cornyn’s birthdate of February 2, was drawn with the lottery number 28. That year, 28 was a very low number. The highest lottery number called for service that year was 95.

So John Cornyn, who claims to have applied for and received a student deferment in 1970 did not go to war, even though Libby Shaw pointed out several instances where students who had deferments lost them as the new and fairer system assigned them each lottery numbers.

I am simply beside myself in wonderment.

Beside myself, mainly because of Cornyn’s hawkish stance on Iraq and Iran.

In wonderment because Cornyn, from his own bio on his Senate website, is the son of a career military officer – an army brat no less.

Shaw makes another pointed comment, directed at the mainstream media. There is an inconsistency here in what should have been a cut-and-dried issue. Cornyn should have lost his 2-S deferment, gained his low lottery number, and reported for duty in 1972. That he didn’t, and no one in the mainstream media has been wondering about it tells you something about political power. Shaw even points out an article in the Texas Observer, that while very complementary to Noriega, claims that Cornyn was too young to have to worry about military service. That was very clearly wrong. A little white lie planted out there.

But I think that this little white lie is the thing that started Shaw on her quest for the truth.

A quest that continues . . .

On Reinstituting the Draft: “Makes Sense to Consider It”

I teach older high school students here in Texas – 17 to 18 year olds. So when it gets announced in class that so-and-so has a birthday, I ask “Are you 18?” Getting the affirmative reply, I kindly remind them to register for the draft.

You still have to register, you know, for the Selective Service System’s involuntary military service, even though our Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are all-volunteer.

Why keep it going?

It’s for, you know, just in case.

Just in case our troops are so exhausted from 2 and 3 tours in Iraq that in order to keep up the pressure there for years and years, we need to reinstitute the draft. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting this . This guy is. Bush’s War Czar, Lt. General Douglas E. Lute said on the 10th that reinstituting the draft has “’always been an option on the table’ and that it ‘makes sense to certainly consider it.’”

Do I smell a rat?

Is Bush’s top advisor on the wars in the Middle East flying something up the flagpole?

The idea is not a new one. Charlie Rangel suggested this very thing last January. Why? To get people of all political stripes off their collective behinds and stand up to oppose this endless war. No one wants their sons and daughters collected up, trained up and sent over to that meat grinder. Especially if the war is, as we all know now, based on lies. Rangel is adamant. Give the rich a chance to show their patriotism. “For those who say the poor fight better, I say give the rich a chance.”

Besides that, if we reinstitute the draft, we can open up yet a third front in the Middle East. We can go after Iran.

Better yet, we can draft millions of our youth into military service and take out the rest of the world. Why not? No one likes us all that much anymore.

Better yet, let’s keep them all home and Drop the Big One.