[rvoitier]

Good post, k.

Calling it for what it is...class warfare. Ms. Donnelly is a pistol.

[gunnedah]

Where was Conyers and Rangel when Demoncrat Lyndon B. Johnson was sending 58000 young men off to be killed in a place called Vietnam.By the way which Party Presidents have declared the most wars and police actions in this country.
Also with the equality now in the military where are all the women that wanted equality, are they going to be on the front lines or in the line to get pregnant. I havent seen any numbers on the numbers of females that are being put aside because of being pregnant.
Everyone wants equality until crunch time!
This may surprise some but I do agree with Conyers and Rangel on the poor and uneducated fighting all our battles on the front lines in the past.The poor and uneducated were not given Military deferments so they are correct on that matter.
Also throughout the wars of this country I have not seen or heard anyone calling for the percentages of those killed by race or gender, wonder why?

[RWG]

The administration should say in a spirit of bipartisanship on the issue of war against Iraq that it will support the draft bill proposed by the democRATS. The republicans in the house should just accept without amendment whatever stupid bill rangel comes up with and send it over to the senate. That is where the embarrassment can be piled high and deep upon the idiots.

[Centurion2000]

"You don't use the military for political objectives," she said.

Actually yes you do. Otheriwse you're just going in a killing stuff.

War is the continuation of a nation's foreign policy after diplomacy and economic pressures have failed (slightly updated von Clauswitz)

[madfly]

fyi

[Grampa Dave]

It sounds like Rangel and his other POS congress buddy have gotten their 30 pieces of Silver from Uncle Soddomite to try and prevent us from removing this mass murderer.

Rangel and Conyers are poster its as the perfect Clymer who hates America and has been feeding on our tax $'s all of their lives.

[Mike Darancette]

A Wall Street Journal article today shows that a larger percentage of white soldiers are in positions to be casualties than blacks.

Special forces such as those used extensively in Iraq are overwhelmingly white.

Reinstate the draft when conditions dictate that we need cannon fodder for human wave attacks.

[Aurelius]

"Two members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to reinstate mandatory military service - the draft - in an attempt to discourage war with Iraq."

How stupid! We had a draft in 1941 and it didn't stop Franklin Roosevelt from getting us into war with Japan, Germany and Italy.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[steve-b]

Conyers denied that the proposal was intended to interfere with possible military action against Iraq.

Did Clinton teach him how to tell ridiculous lies with a straight face, of did he teach Clinton?

[steve-b]

it removes the long-held stigma that people of color and persons from low-income backgrounds are disproportionately killed and injured while serving as ground troops on the front line

The alleged "facts" behind this claim have already been shown to be, well, non-factual. However, the whole argument should also be refuted on a more fundamental level.

Yes, jobs that involve much unpleasantness and relatively little reward are going to be disproprotionately filled with "people from low-income backgrounds". This is because people with the wherewithal to get more enjoyable and better paid jobs will usually do just that, thereby removing themselves from the "low-income background" category.

The bottom line is that if you want to bring a more upscale crowd into the Army, you have to either make it less difficult (which doesn't square very well with the quaint concept of "military readiness") or more rewarding (i.e. better pay, more training that can be applied to a later civilian job search, etc).