The pro-Bush blogoshpere's having a field day with Sen. Kerry's alleged statement that if President Bush is reelected, he'd bring back the draft. Instapundit jumped on the story but, then, after the quote was put into context, retreated a bit. Still, he linked to this snarky post from Chicago Boyz.

Here's what Kerry said:

"If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can't tell you."

Seems to me Kerry was implying our military is stretched too thin, and that if a front opens up in North Korea or Iran, all bets are off.

That the military is spread too far and wide is a point that's been made by countless ex-military people, strategists, media, commentators and politicians, including the GOP's own Kay Bailey Hutchison. Even the Pentagon admits as much at candid moments:

There was a rare public acknowledgement this week before Congress that at least some in the Pentagon know the U.S. military is stretched too thin, something that some lawmakers and military analysts have been saying for months.

Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, told the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that the military could not properly respond with overwhelming force to a major war threat if one developed at this time.

There's also some evidence that if the Bush administration isn't yet entertaining the possibility of conscription, it's at least laying ground for the possibility later. Soldiers in Iraq who've served a full tour of duty are already being held over with stop-loss orders which, according to media reports, is having devastating effects on morale. Inactive personnel are also being involuntarily called up for duty. There's also been some suspicious activity of late from the Selective Service System.

Instapundit also writes that:

Maybe some reporters should ask him why, if this is a secret Bush plan, it's Democrats in Congress who are sponsoring bills to bring back the draft?

And the poster at ChicagoBoyz writes:

No Republican has ever suggested we do this, and some Democrats have proposed it.

I've been very critical of the left, and have mocked Reps. Rangel and Conyers for thier draft talk nonsense. But the idea that the right is innocent of draft talk simply isn't true.

Inroduced three months after 9/11, House Resolution 3598 is called"The Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001."

Language:

"Makes it the obligation of male citizens and residents between 18 and 22 to receive basic military training and education as a member of the armed forces unless otherwise exempt under this Act."

Sponsors of that bill were:

Smith, Michigan -- Republican
Weldon, Pennsylvania -- Republican
Bartlett, Maryland -- Republican

Here's GOP Senator James Inhofe:

"I think I'm the only member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who would reinstate the draft. There are huge social benefits that come from it. I can assure you I would not be in the U.S. Senate today if I had not gone through the draft. When I look at the problems of some of our kids in America nowadays and then I go visit the troops, I see what a great benefit it is to give people the opportunity to serve their country."

And there's GOP Senator Chuck Hagel:

A Republican U.S. senator is calling for a return of the military draft so the cost of the Iraq operation could be borne by people of all economic strata.

Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said,"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future."

Hagel, a member of the committee, says all Americans should be involved in the effort.

"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring the draft would force"our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."

The senator also argued re-instituting the draft, which ended in the early '70s, would cause the burden of military service to be spread among all economic classes of people.

"Those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class," he claimed.

Sen. John McCain has repeatedly expressed his desire for a mandatory national service program. The only thing that's stopping him, he's said, is that the political climate isn't yet ripe for the idea.

And he's not an elected official, but influential neocon darling David Brooks has called for mandatory national and/or military service on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, writing:

"[Mandatory national service ] takes kids out of the normal self-obsessed world of career and consumption and orients them toward service and citizenship."

And:

"Today's children ... would suddenly face drill sergeants reminding them they are nothing without the group."

Make no mistake, this is bipartisan stupidity.

A nice article on The Hayekian Triumph of the Blogosphere:"If Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek had been watching last week as bloggers spontaneously responded to fraudulent documents aired by the program"60 Minutes", he would've grinned in humble satisfaction. Hayek's work centered on the effectiveness of spontaneous, decentralized organization." It partners well with this piece from The Guardian (UK) entitled"Blogging on: The web is being used to hold old media to account."

For more commentary, please see McBlog

There is a raging debate on libertarianism and the Iraq War at Crooked Timber. The discussion centers on the role played by pro-war libertarians in the blogosphere. For those who want to join in, visit here.

Hat tip to Ralph Luker at Cliopatria for calling this to my attention. I wrote the following (edited and revised) comments:

"As a long-time libertarian who writes on a predominantly antiwar libertarian website at the History News Network (Liberty and Power), I must admit to the charge of a libertarian"macho swagger" that sometimes leads to pro-war conclusions. Years ago, Michael Emerling called it the"libertarian macho flash."

Having said this, too many folks here have greatly exaggerated the influence of the"liberventionists." I think that the evidence is compelling that most active libertarians are more antiwar than either the left or right. Nearly all that I know opposed the Kosovo War.

Though several prominent libertarians support the Iraq War, I think it is still safe to say that a majority of the activists in self-identified leading libertarian organizations including the Libertarian Party, Cato, the Von Mises Institute, and the Independent Institute opposed the war from the outset."

Despite all of the death and mayhem in Iraq and counterproductive results in the war on terror, the ever-chipper President Bush soldiers on with upbeat assessments of those efforts in campaign appearances. And the ever-gullible American voter is apparently willing to believe him.

Just as it is “unpatriotic” these days to criticize the U.S. military during a war, it is equally politically incorrect to criticize the pitifully uninformed American public. To ingratiate themselves with voters, politicians usually crow about the “inherent wisdom of the American people.” But that wisdom is sorely lacking on national security issues.

Despite John Kerry’s criticism of Bush on such matters, a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates that voters still trust Bush more than Kerry to deal with the war in Iraq by 53 percent to 37 percent. The same poll shows that they also have greater trust in Bush to prosecute the war on terrorism by an even bigger margin-57 percent to 35 percent. A USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll shows similar results: 54 percent to 41 percent on Iraq and 61 percent to 34 percent on the war on terrorism.

Granted, Kerry’s congressional vote in favor of the Iraq War and the Kerry campaign’s general incompetence have legitimately hindered his attempts to distinguish himself from Bush on such issues. But given the stark realities, one would expect the numbers to be reversed.

The Bush administration has been responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 U.S. service personnel, the wounding of 7,000 more and the deaths of perhaps 10,000 Iraqis (a crude estimate because the Pentagon refuses to release figures) in an unneeded war that was sold on false pretenses. If a war is unnecessary, then the perpetrators must assume responsibility for even unintended casualties and destruction (what the U.S. military euphemistically calls “collateral damage”) and horrific excesses, such as the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, not directly authorized by the leader. (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here). Like the roadside bombs in Iraq, all of the administration’s justifications for the war have exploded in its face. A new report by Charles Duelfer, the administration’s new chief weapons inspector-who replaced David Kay, the old chief weapons inspector, who quit when no “weapons of mass destruction” were found-has recently confirmed what has been obvious: no super weapons will ever be found in Iraq. And despite the administration’s constant and brazen false innuendos to the contrary, the 9/11 Commission confirmed the views of most in the U.S. intelligence community: that no operational collaboration occurred between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet the American people still seem to believe this charade. The fallback justification of bringing republican government to Iraq and the Middle East now looks ridiculously hollow. Even President Bush has been using the word “stability” more and “democracy” less in describing U.S. goals in Iraq.

But even stability is in question. A rash of new studies paint an ominous picture for Iraq’s future. For example, a National Intelligence Estimate done for the president listed tenuous stability as the best outcome of three possible scenarios. Even more dire, a study by the Chatham House, a prestigious British research institute, predicted that a fragmented Iraq was the “default scenario.”

These predictions are based on the realities on the ground, not the continued Pollyanna rhetoric of the Bush administration. Attacks on American forces alone-not to mention the much more frequent attacks on the bumbling Iraqi security forces-have skyrocketed from 15 per day in October 2003, to 30 in December 2003, 45 in June 2004, and almost 90 in August 2004. Security in Iraq’s cities is already more dicey than in Vietnamese cities during that war. Important Iraqi urban areas are under the control of the insurgents, and those still under U.S. control are not safe. Such realities will most likely make the scheduled January 2005 elections impossible.

Also, the administration did not use enough troops to close the porous borders to prevent guerrilla infiltration from neighboring countries. Furthermore, the administration pretends that the insurgents are exclusively criminals, foreign terrorists, or former Saddam loyalists, discounting the more likely and ominous possibility that many are normal Iraqis who are angered by a foreign invasion and occupation of their country.

As for the war on terrorism, the two top leaders of al Qaeda have escaped capture for three years, and the pace and lethality of the group’s post-9/11 attacks have exceeded those of its pre-9/11 strikes, according to the anonymous senior U.S intelligence officer who wrote the book Imperial Hubris. Although no catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil has occurred since September 11, excessive optimism is misplaced because such events are rare and al Qaeda’s planning horizon is long. The respite that al Qaeda received from the diversion of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence assets to the invasion of Iraq helped the organization survive; the subsequent Mesopotamian mess has been a recruiting poster for radical Islamist terrorists worldwide that has enabled the group to thrive.

On November 2, whether voting for Bush or his opponent, voters should focus on the president’s actual record of undermining U.S. security rather than his duplicitous and sunshiny rhetoric.

Worth reading: “How Tax Cuts Feed the Beast." What’s the argument for a Bush reelection again?

According to the New York Post,"The hot rumor in New York political circles has Roger Stone, the longtime GOP activist, as the source for Dan Rather's dubious Texas Air National Guard `memos.' The irony would be delicious, since Rather became famous confronting President Nixon, in whose service a very young Stone became associated with political"dirty tricks." And, then, the Democratic National Committee issued the following press release: McAuliffe: Will GOP Answer If They Know Whether Stone, Others Had Involvement With CBS Documents? (Washington, D.C.) - In response to false Republican accusations regarding the CBS documents, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement: In today's New York Post, Roger Stone, who became associated with political 'dirty tricks' while working for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the CBS documents. Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what they know about Mr. Stone's relationship with these forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr. Stone's involvement? Or for that matter, others with a known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or Ralph Reed?" In a USA Today article entitled"Parties lob accusations over suspect papers," however, Stone denies involvement, saying"I have nothing whatsoever to do with this." Interesting.

For more commentary, please see McBlog.

I found this post at Crooked Timber interesting.

The problem British progressives have with fox hunting apparently isn't the actual animal cruelty, it's that people are deriving pleasure from the animal cruelty. It's the sadism that makes it egregious enough to merit a prohibition, not the act itself.

I have little use for fox hunting, and in fact I agree with the poster -- it's pretty sadistic. But pleasure derived from sadism shouldn't be reason enough for a law.

You could perhaps make a case that government ought to police unnecessary cruelty to animals. But I get antsy when we start policing people's minds for off-limits pleasures.

Is the tide turning against the the hegemony of the term"African-American" back to the less"girlie man,""black?" I hope so. I have always avoided the term African-American and will hold out for"black" until the bitter end if necessary. Now, at least I have one ally. John McWhorter writes:

"It's time we descendants of slaves brought to the United States let go of the term"African-American" and go back to calling ourselves Black -- with a capital B.

....the special value of"Black" is that it carries the same potent combination of pride, remembrance and regret that 'African-American' was designed for. Think of what James Brown meant with 'Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud.' And then imagine: 'Say it loud, I'm African-American and I'm proud.'"

McWhorter could have also pointed out the transparent inconsistency and indecisiveness of most who favor the term African-American. Repeatedly, I have noticed that they lapse back into black (and for no apparent reason). Make up your minds!

Most advocates of African-American over black also fail to follow through and be reasonably consistent when they draw contrasts. Instead of pairing African-American with European-American, for example, they invariably pair it with white. Why? I'd like to hear an answer that makes any sense.