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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (220235)	2/22/2005 7:30:30 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573927

Deferments were not easy to come by during Vietnam Many millions of people got them. The CIA factbook shows Military manpower - reaching military age annually: 2,124,164 (2004 est.) Now that is 2004 data. Our population was smaller back than, but it had to be will over a million men reaching military age each year. Now how many people were drafted each year? And how many of them went to Vietnam? I'm not sure but it was a lot less than a million a year even at the peak of American involvement in Vietnam. We never had much more than 500k there, and most of the time we had less. Also many of them where not drafted (or if initially drafted signed up again so they where no longer draftees). If you take the average number of Americans in Vietnam over the course of the war, subtract the people in the Marines, Navy, and Air force. Subtract the mid level and senior NCOs and all officers, subtract all women, and everyone left that wasn't drafted and you probably have less then 200k, maybe less than 100k. Why do you think 1000's went to Canada? It wasn't for the weather, they had no other choice. Thousands is a small number in a country of 200 million. Yes I'm sure that those 1000's feared being drafted and many of them would have been drafted if they didn't leave. I'm not denying that a lot of people were drafted, just defending my statement "Even in Vietnam with up to 5 times as many people in country and an army that might have been twice as big we didn't draft most draft age men." Which is true. If Iraq is the first battle of a longer war (as the neo's insist) there will certainly be a draft... I would change that to "as some neo's insist"), and "there will possibly be a draft". And add the qualifier that if it is the first major invasion of a longer war, not just one part of a longer war, or "the first battle". Overall I think a draft very unlikely. If we had to we could later do another invasion without a draft and I don't think another invasion is very likely anyway. if we can't lower out troop levels in Iraq over the next 4 years, even without another conflict, then there will probably be a draft. I don't think its likely that we will have the same (or higher) troop strength in Iraq in 4 years, but even if we do it will not require a draft. Tim