{"id":9417,"date":"2006-12-22T10:30:45","date_gmt":"2006-12-22T15:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9417.html"},"modified":"2006-12-22T10:30:45","modified_gmt":"2006-12-22T15:30:45","slug":"bushs-va-secretary-floats-idea-of-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-va-secretary-floats-idea-of-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s VA secretary floats idea of draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s hope this<\/a> wasn’t some kind of trial balloon. <\/p>\n

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson gave qualified support yesterday to renewing the draft – a suggestion that rattled the White House.<\/p>\n

“I think that our society would benefit from that, yes, sir,” Nicholson said of replacing the all-volunteer force with a tough draft purged of the deferments that allowed many to avoid service in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

“I think if we bring back the draft, there should be no loopholes for anybody who happens to be drafted,” he said. “If it’s a random system, it ought to be an honestly random system.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coming a day after the president announced his desire to increase the size of the military, Nicholson’s timing could have been better.<\/p>\n

The White House pounced, telling reporters, “The administration is not considering reinstating the draft.”<\/p>\n

Of course, the Bush gang also made Nicholson reverse course. Too bad the spin was unpersuasive.
\n<\/p>\n

Nicholson later said his remarks had been “misconstrued,” and he issued a statement saying, “I strongly support the all-volunteer military and do not support returning to a draft.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard to “misconstrue” comments such as “I think that our society would benefit” from a draft.” If Nicholson wants a full retraction, it’ll take some better rhetorical acrobatics than this.<\/p>\n

Then again, I have some follow-up for the VA Secretary — if you think a loophole-less draft would benefit society, why don’t<\/i> you support returning to a draft?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s hope this wasn’t some kind of trial balloon. Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson gave qualified support yesterday to renewing the draft – a suggestion that rattled the White House. “I think that our society would benefit from that, yes, sir,” Nicholson said of replacing the all-volunteer force with a tough draft purged of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}