The words that strike fear in my heart:

Reinstituting the Draft

Goddamned Ralph Nader. Don't friggin give Bush any ideas!

I predicted this way back in the fall of 2001, right after 9/11, and everyone called me crazy. Back then, I only had one son about to become old enough to be drafted. Now I have two. The idea of having young men (after all, it's only 18 year old men registering for the Draft) being drafted to fight this war in Iraq, and possibly make the "ultimate sacrifice" for their country scares the shit out of me.

On the one hand, I can see where this might be a reality: the volunteer forces are being stretched way too thin. Asking reservists to spend up to a year in a hostile environment, away from their families, disrupting their lives, is not what they signed up for when they joined. The full time soldiers knew what enlisting would entail if it came to this point, and are prepared to take it on. But still, our men and women are dying over there on a daily basis, and for what? Is this really a war for oil? Were there never WMD's, and Bush lied to us to perhaps finish what his father could not? The only upside to this is that we got that despot Saddam Hussein in custody. There are clearly people there in Iraq who hate us, and want to do us harm in anyway possible.

On the other hand, I am the mother of an 18 year old and a 20 year old. A lot of the soldiers dying and getting hurt there are in the 18-24 age range. Am I going to be one of the mothers glued to the TV hoping NOT to hear her son's name mentioned as being hurt or killed? It's not like Cheney or Bush, or Ashcroft are going over there to fight. They just make the wars, but they'll send my kid over there to fight it in a heartbeat if a Draft comes to pass.

Another black mark for Bush in my book. Send one of your precious daughters over there, Mr. President, and maybe you'll see where I'm coming from.

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