http://www.blatanttruth.org/alert.htm

Special Military Draft Alert

September 14, 2004

Please distribute this content and the official SSS draft document,
the Feb. 11, 2003 "Issue Paper," to all college newspaper editors, in
LTTEs [ letters to the editor] and mass e- mails.

Not to be confused with draft legislation introduced by Congressman
Charles Rangel in 2003 and it is not associated with any Democrat.
This PLAN is the work entirely of George W. Bush and his Republican
comrades.

This is a SPECIAL MILITARY DRAFT ALERT. In May, the Seattle Post
Intelligencer published an article about a document they received
through the Freedom of Information Act. It was revealed that the SSS
is currently "designing procedures" for the implementation of a
"Skills Draft" and had held a top-level meeting on it with Deputy
Undersecretaries at the Defense Department. This draft would change
the essential mission of the Selective Service and require "virtually
every young American," male and female ages 18–34, to register for the
Skills Draft and list all the occupations they are proficient in to
fill labor shortages throughout nearly the entire government. If
enacted, the Skills Draft proposed in this FOI- recovered document
would change America as we know it.

The Pentagon is suffering from immediate labor shortages. Recently,
the inactive Ready Reserve had to be called up for the first time
since the Gulf War to fill 5,600 job shortages in the Armed Forces.
DoD said in the recent IRR callup "20% of the call-ups are truck
drivers, 12% are supply specialists who can use a computer to track
supplies, 10% are Humvee mechanics, 7% are administrative specialists
and 6% are combat engineers" (USA Today, August 8, 2004).

Although Congress would have to approve new legislation to create a
Skills Draft or reinstate the combat draft, Family Circle reported in
its July 13 issue that Karl Rove had polled GOP members of Congress in
September 2002 to see if they would support the President if he
requests reinstatement. The Republicans said they would vote for the
draft. They would likely support the new legislation needed to create
the Skills Draft. While Bush and the Republicans are of course keeping
the return of the draft and the new skills draft as quiet as possible,
many anti-draft organizations have recently begun warning of a "Coming
New Draft. "

The Issue Paper document was revealed through the Freedom of
Information Act by Seattle Post Intelligencer reporter Eric Rosenberg,
who wrote a partial explanation of it that was printed May 1, 2004.

Rosenberg's article was edited, however, and some key points about
this document were omitted in the published article. What follows is a
full explanation of the document.

This document is real, having been acknowledged by the DoD and the SSS
when they said no action is being taken on it at the present time.
However, given the current manpower shortages for certain skills and
nurses, if Bush gets back in, expect all the options outlined in the
Issue Paper to be implemented by the end of December of this year, and
at the least a non-combat skills and medical draft to start next year,
if not the male combat draft, ages 18 –25.

Despite Rumsfeld saying the draft is not needed, this is the same
neo-con administration that has repeatedly lied to and misled the
American people. Draft-age youth and their families are left looking
at a "long, hard slog" in Iraq (Rumsfeld secret memo), the neo-con
plans to invade still more nations, and then having to take Rumsfeld
and Cheney's word not to worry about the draft, that they "are not
considering it at this time."

Although official word is that this secret list of options is not
being implemented—the Issue Paper options have NOT been rejected and
the 6-page proposal is rather sitting in the Pentagon, waiting. In
addition, the SSS itself has said that it is "designing procedures"
(Seattle PI, May 1, 2004) to implement the skills draft, meaning
designing the compliance cards and the data fields needed to keep
track of "virtually every young American" and their skills. Acting
Director of the SSS Brodsky has also said the Skills Draft is the "top
priority" of the Selective Service for 2004.

From the FOI document, we now know that on February 11, 2003, Charles
Abell, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and
Readiness, and William Carr, Deputy Undersecretary for Military
Personnel Policy, met with Lewis Brodsky, the Acting Director of the
Selective Service and some other officials. This is the highest-level
meeting you could have about the Selective Service, outside of
Rumsfeld and his inner circle. They were there to discuss the urgent
"issue paper" now revealed, which starts: "With known shortages of
military personnel with certain critical skills, and with the need for
the nation to be capable of responding to domestic emergencies as a
part of Homeland Security Planning, changes should be made in the
Selective Service System's registration program and primary mission."

Although it would require changes in current draft law, the
far-reaching proposal shows how far the Republicans are going to plan
and prepare for a huge expansion of the draft. The Issue Paper options
include:

* Change the very mission of the SSS to become a massive
conscription service in the War on Terror for the entire government.
* Conscript men and women in a critical skills non-combat draft up
to age 34 with no deferments of any kind, except "essential community
service" (like the Medical Draft).
* Allow a non-combat draft for shortages in critical skills,
without calling a combat draft.
* Fill labor shortages of all kinds throughout not only DoD but
the whole government, especially high-paying professionals like
computer networking specialist or linguist.
* Create a massive database of "virtually every young American"
ages 18 to 34. This database would be used to draft in war and to
recruit in peacetime. State and even local governments would be given
access to the names for recruitment and help in emergencies.
* Create a single-point, all-inclusive database, in which every
young person would be forced to send in a "self-declaration" of all of
their critical skills, chosen from a long list of occupations like the
Armed Forces Specialty Code. The self-declaration is similar to IRS
compliance and the filling out and signing of your tax forms. All
young people would be required to keep the government updated if they
acquired a new skill. SSS Compliance forms will be available at every
Post Office. The usual penalties of imprisonment and/or a $250,000
fine would apply to all non-registrants.
* A draft or recruitment could be for any one of the skills you
self- declare on the compliance form, not your current or primary
skill. This greatly increases your chance of being drafted if you are
18–34.
* Bring the Medical Draft (HCPDS) up to speed and fully test it
through readiness exercises.
* Reduce induction time from being able to deliver all inductees
in 193 days down to just 90 days for skills inductees.

This secret paper urges the mission be changed "promptly," meaning
they really need it, it would draft for the Pentagon as well as the
enormous Homeland Security branches as well as other government
agencies, even state and local!

For obvious political reasons, the decision was made by Bush, Cheney
and Rove to sit on this 6-page proposal until after the election in
November. Yet the SSS was told to go ahead and begin "designing
procedures" for the Skills Draft in 2004 and make it their "top
priority." It can be expected that if Bush gets back in, and the DoD
and SSS are still asking for the Skills Draft, the "Next Steps" part
of the document will be put into action and the most expansive option
to change the SSS mission will be rapidly legislated.

In the secret planning meeting document, the next steps strongly
recommended by SSS Acting Director Brodsky were:

1. "Promptly" redefine the SSS Mission to draft men and women up to
age 34 for skills, and deliver them within 90 days or sooner to the
Department of Defense. Program a massive database to be ready to enter
millions of names of those registering their critical skills.

2. Expand mission to deliver personnel in skills draft to the
Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, including FEMA,
NSC, Border Patrol, INS, Customs, Corporation for National Service,
Public Health Service and other federal, state and local government
agencies.

3. Form interagency task force to provide Administration with
recommendation on this skills draft for the entire DHS and the rest of
the government.

4. Obtain White House Statement of Administration Policy on the future
of the SSS.

5. Be prepared to market the skills draft, raising the non-combat age
to 34 and the drafting of women to the Armed Services and
Appropriations Committee.

This proposed expansion of the draft, forcing all people under 35 to
register with the SSS, man or woman, is primarily proposed, according
to the document, because the cost of providing contract professionals,
like computer network specialists, would be "prohibitive." In this
way, the proposed Skills Draft would help preserve Bush's massive tax
cuts for the wealthy by lowering the massive budget deficits.

That's the new Skills Draft and the secret document behind it. But
what about the Combat Draft?

Selective Service has been registering young men for over twenty years
and at any moment the President can go to Congress and ask them to
reauthorize conscription for the male combat draft for ages 18–25. It
doesn't take much to imagine a re-elected Bush going to Congress and
saying "We cannot cut and run from Iraq or the War on Terror. I need
you to reauthorize conscription."

And they would not have to pass a whole new draft law to do it. All
that is needed is a "trigger resolution," which could be passed in the
dead of night—and bingo! No debate, no regular bill, just a short
resolution passed quickly and the draft for men 18 to 25 is back.

That is why the Democratic draft resolution being offered by Rangel
and Hollings is totally irrelevant. These are known protest bills and
actually propose drafting women for the combat draft, just to make
sure they will never see the light of day. Rangel and Hollings offered
them to raise the issue and confront Bush. Hollings even said he
wouldn't vote for his own bill!

They are not needed—and the press and the Republicans will bring them
up as red herrings to distract everyone from what is really going on:
the Republicans, and the SSS are quietly, behind the scenes, oiling up
the draft machinery—getting ready to reinstate for the Spring of 2005.
Taken singly, each of the clues indicating the return and expansion of
the draft might seem insignificant but when you add them all up with
what the Selective Service is doing to gear up the combat draft, a
clear pattern emerges, leading to the inescapable conclusion that a
Bush re-election will see not only a Skills Draft, but a return of the
Combat Draft as well.

What is the proof? The government's own document, the SSS Performance
Plan for Fiscal Year 2004.

The Selective Service System, or the SSS, has for decades operated at
a low level of readiness. Readiness Exercises are conducted on a
multi-year cycle but historically these have been little more than
getting draft board volunteers together and going over the procedures
of what would happen under reinstatement and training new members
every summer. And the draft boards themselves have become 80% vacant
over the decades.

In the current 5-year cycle of exercises, however, the SSS is clearly
ramping up the draft machinery to an unprecedented level.

"Strategic Objective 1.2: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 56
State Headquarters, 442 Area Offices and 1,980 Local Boards are
operational within 75 days of an authorized return to conscription."

Tie that to this objective:

An annual report providing the results of the implementation of these
performance measures will be submitted by March 31, 2005.

75 days from March 31, 2005 is about June 15, 2005. According to the
2004 plan, the draft boards will be "operational" then, meaning that
they will be set up in 1,980 local offices around the country. If Bush
asks for reinstatement on April 1, Congress could pass it that night
and the first batch of more than one million 20 year-olds would face
the national lottery as soon as that date, June 15, 2005.

Here is how the $28 million is being spent according to the official
document. Although the Senate rejected the funding request to bump up
the SSS budget to $28 million, the SSS says in one paragraph of the
Performance Plan that budgets will be "adjusted" to cover the
additional cost for 2004:

Strategic Goal 1: Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the
Manpower Delivery Systems (Projected allocation for FY 2004: $7,942,000)

Strategic Goal 2: Improve overall Registration Compliance and Service
to the Public (Projected allocation FY 2004: $8,769,000)

Strategic Goal 3: Enhance external and internal customer service
(Projected allocation for FY 2004: $10 ,624,000)

Strategic Goal 4: Enhance the system which guarantees that each
conscientious objector is properly classified, placed, and monitored.
(Projected allocation for FY 2004: $955,000)

In analyzing each of the 2004 goals in detail it is obvious that there
are hidden "activation bombshells" in this so-called Performance Plan.
Goal number 1 in particular brings the combat induction process up to
95% operational readiness, going so far as to actually hold a mock
lottery drawing this year and to issue sample orders to report for the
famous medical exam. The document does not reveal the day in 2004 the
mock lottery is to be held.

In addition, the Medical Draft, or Health Care Personnel Delivery
System (HCPDS in the document), is for the first time brought up to
full readiness by next year. This draft would take men and women up to
age 44 if they are doctors, nurses or one of 60-some medical
specialties. No medical deferments allowed. Previous readiness
exercises merely went over what would happen with HCPDS and updated
the guide. The 2004 plan actually develops a readiness exercise for
the Medical Draft that would be conducted next year. Plus HCPDS must
be ready to conscript by June, being part of the system.

Goal number four is particularly ominous:

Strategic Objective 4.1: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 48
Alternative Service Offices and 48 Civilian Review Boards are
operational within 96 days after notification of a return to induction.

Strategic Objective 4.2: Develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
for the Alternative Service Employer Network to specifically identify
organizations and associations who can, by law, participate in the
Alternative Service Program. This network will provide jobs for ASWs
at the local level. Prior to activation, SSS will develop a draft MOU
for use when obtaining agreements with qualified employers at the
local and national level.

For 31 years, the Conscientious Objector system, called the
Alternative Service, has lain dormant. The 2004 plan also calls for
this to be brought up to speed and to be ready to decide cases and
place COs in the Alternative Service by July 6, 2005 (96 days after
March 31, 2005). The SSS is even going so far as to draw up the SOPs,
the Standard Operating Procedures which identify local employers
eligible to receive cheap AS workers and to also draw up the actual
MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding the employer must sign to get
their CO workers and allow their mandatory attendance to be monitored.
This is the last obstacle to be hurdled before the draft could
actually be ready for quick activation under the law.

In sharp contrast to all this preparation for a Spring 2005 draft by
Bush, Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry has proposed a
military plan that rejects any draft, by adding 20,000 active duty
combat soldiers and 20,000 active "reconstruction specialists." At a
Wisconsin high school, Kerry pledged in June, 2004, that the draft
would be "absolutely unnecessary." When asked in April by 130 college
editors in a conference call as to whether he would support a draft,
John Kerry said unequivocally: "No. No draft" and he has criticized
the use of the Guard and Reserve and now the Individual Ready Reserve
as a "back-door draft."

Kerry plans to spend an additional $7 billion to strengthen the
Volunteer Army in what is essentially a "No-Draft Plan," Moreover,
Kerry is strongly opposed to the neo-con plan revealed in Wes Clark's
book, in which Clark was told by a senior Pentagon official that
invasions of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan and Somalia are still to come
over the next three years.