The draft gambit

Keep up, private snowball


Charlie Rangel's call for a draft has had people flipping out. Not that even his own constituents are for conscription, they are emphatically are not.

But there is one reason to let him bring his legislation up

Hearings.

For three years, we have been lied to about recriuting, stop-loss and basically every personnel issue with the armed forces.

Once Rangel is allowed to get people under oath on the Hill, we could get some very interesting answers, like what recruiters do to fill their quotas, why gays are still being expelled from the military, the abuse of IRR and stop loss.

Oh, the questions which would flow from a hearing on the draft would be amusing and place any talk of a longer stay in Iraq on the table.

The Pentagon would swear everything is fine, but then we get the ex-recruiters, the academic experts. Oh, it would be a cavalcade of fun calling the Pentagon on their bullshit.

What happened in 2003 is that the GOP brought the bill to a vote without hearings. Hearings changes the whole game. The testimony would be out in the open and the bullshit would stop. Rangel and the Congress would have the evidence of the obvious, as long as the war in Iraq continues, recruiting will be a problem.