The Draft? Line up and Sign up--OR--Get Rid Of Chimp_junta
A Cold Draft: Will Bush Bring Back the Draft?
By: Ted Rall
NEW YORK--When I was a kid, standing around the post office waiting for my mom to buy stamps, I entertained myself by flipping through the "wanted" notices clipped to the bulletin board. I was impressed by the fact that most of the people who'd done bad things didn't look all that evil in their mug shots. Mostly the felons looked tired. And poor. You could tell from their frayed collars.
Mixed in with the accused murderers, kidnappers and mail fraud conspirators (this was the post office, after all) were local kids wanted for dodging the draft. Their profiles didn't look anything like those of men wanted for tri-state killing sprees. The sections dedicated to "prior convictions" were blank and the government didn't have fingerprints for them. Draft evaders' photos came from their high school yearbooks where everyone turned a little to the right, grinning with optimism and framed by shaggy early '70s haircuts. Nevertheless, the message was clear. As far as the government was concerned, evading service in Vietnam was as bad as boosting a bank.
Whenever the feds needed more cannon fodder, they interrupted primetime sit-coms to broadcast a draft lottery. Two guys wearing American flag lapel pins would turn a metal tumbler and pluck out slips of paper bearing birthdays from 18 years earlier. "If you were born on April 4, 1951, you have 30 days to report to your local Selective Service bureau."
The rest of the story: Link
By: Ted Rall
NEW YORK--When I was a kid, standing around the post office waiting for my mom to buy stamps, I entertained myself by flipping through the "wanted" notices clipped to the bulletin board. I was impressed by the fact that most of the people who'd done bad things didn't look all that evil in their mug shots. Mostly the felons looked tired. And poor. You could tell from their frayed collars.
Mixed in with the accused murderers, kidnappers and mail fraud conspirators (this was the post office, after all) were local kids wanted for dodging the draft. Their profiles didn't look anything like those of men wanted for tri-state killing sprees. The sections dedicated to "prior convictions" were blank and the government didn't have fingerprints for them. Draft evaders' photos came from their high school yearbooks where everyone turned a little to the right, grinning with optimism and framed by shaggy early '70s haircuts. Nevertheless, the message was clear. As far as the government was concerned, evading service in Vietnam was as bad as boosting a bank.
Whenever the feds needed more cannon fodder, they interrupted primetime sit-coms to broadcast a draft lottery. Two guys wearing American flag lapel pins would turn a metal tumbler and pluck out slips of paper bearing birthdays from 18 years earlier. "If you were born on April 4, 1951, you have 30 days to report to your local Selective Service bureau."
The rest of the story: Link
posted by A. J. Franklin @ 18:34
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