----- Original Message -----

(With proper deletions appropriate for privacy protection of senders)
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 8:18 AM
Subject: Fw: veterans decry rumsfeld's draft statements As a Vietnam Vet and draftee, I find Rumsfeld's remarks very insulting. He dishonors the draftees listed on the WALL who gave the Ultimate Sacrifice for our Country.

SC
E. Co. 15th Eng. Bn, 9th Inf. Div. '67 - '68
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:40 PM
: Veterans decry Rumsfeld's draft statements

fyi, I know there will probably be mixed feelings about initiating a draft, but the following recorded comments by Donald Rumsfeld are an insult to vets.

Subj: VVA: Veterans decry Rumsfield's draft comments

Date: 1/11/03 7:40:04 PM Pacific Standard Time

: (VVA Talklist)

Veterans decry Rumsfeld's draft comments
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
From the Desk 1/10/2003 2:46 PM WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A Vietnam War veterans' group is taking exception to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comments this week on the possibility of a new draft. "Secretary Rumsfeld said troops from Vietnam War conscription 'added no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services ...'"

Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation said a statement issued Friday. "As Vietnam veterans who served with conscripted soldiers, we find Secretary Rumsfeld's egregious slur a grave insult to the memory, sacrifice and valor of those who lost their lives, and, further, dismissive of the hundreds and thousands of lives, both in the U.S. and in Vietnam, who were devastatingly shattered by the Vietnam War."

Rumsfeld, while commenting on a bill introduced to initiate the draft, said it was unnecessary. "We're not going to re-implement a draft," he said Tuesday. "There is need for it at all."

He spoke of the fact that many of those who were drafted were trained, served for a short time and then left the service. Rumsfeld first referred to the many exemptions issued to certain men in the draft and then said, "what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any period of time, because the churning that took place, it took amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone."

Critics said Rumsfeld's comments were unconscionable.

"To me if you look at the whole quote it's even worse," said John Terzano, vice president of the Vietnam Veteran of American Foundation, which shared a Nobel Prize in 1997 for its work helping landmine victims. "He's sitting there saying draftees add no value to the military and that's unconscionable ... Draftees stayed in as long they needed to be in the service -- they stayed in. "How can he sit there and say they added no value to the army?" He said Rumsfeld should have been "a little bit more careful with his wording and not be so glib."

An official at the organization said the base concern was the "cavalierness of the way (Rumsfeld) said it." Rumsfeld declared unequivocally Tuesday there would be no resumption the draft as he and his military leaders all believe a volunteer force was more efficient and effective.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a Korean War veteran and a strong critic of going to war with Iraq, introduced a bill to initiate a draft because he believes the burden of military service is borne disproportionately by minorities. Rangel also believes if there were a universal draft, Congress and the public would have less of an appetite for war as it would mean endangering their own children's lives. Minorities compose more than a third of the military, though they make up only about one-quarter of the American populace.

"I don't find that a compelling argument to spend all the money you would spend in churning people through and all the disadvantages that would accrue to bringing people into the service who didn't want to serve in the service," Rumsfeld said Tuesday. ( Copyright C 2001-2003 United Press International)

> By Chris Floyd, Moscow Times

"Last week, we wrote of the brutal contempt shown by the Bush Regime toward the troops sent out as cannon fodder for its wars of profit and domination. We inferred this contempt -- still unspoken at that time -- from the Pentagon's crash program to create "super-soldiers," using drugs, hormones, wired brains, even genetic modification to turn young men and women into sleepless, remorseless killing machines.

"This kind of abuse, coupled with the Regime's increasingly callous treatment -- or rather, lack of treatment -- of the nation's aging military veterans, clearly indicated a profound disrespect for the essential worth of each individual soldier. They were not regarded as human beings, but as just so much biological material to be manipulated at the whim their leaders, then discarded.

"Again, this was all by inference; we looked to deeds, not the honeyed words of praise for "our magnificent troops" offered at whiles by President Bush and his warlord, Donald Rumsfeld. But just as foul deeds will rise, no matter how thickly they are plastered over, so too will a word of ugly truth sometimes escape from the lips of even the most practiced deceiver. And so it was last week, when Rumsfeld inadvertently confirmed the elite's scornful contempt for the suckers who serve them on the frontiers of empire. "It was at a Pentagon press briefing -- the usual assured performance, with the relaxed defense chief holding forth and cracking wise before a roomful of awed, sycophantic reporters. He parried softball questions about Iraq and Korea, announced a few changes to the command structure of "Special Operations" (the significance of which was almost totally ignored by the big-time media players at the scene; more on this below), then answered a question about recent proposals to reinstate military conscription.

"These proposals are a political ploy adopted by some liberal Democrats to force Washington's political leadership -- of both parties -- to think more seriously about the reality of committing troops to war. It's all too easy for the elite to approve military action when the lives of their own privileged sons and daughters are never on the line. Let's have a real draft, say these liberals, one without the exemptions and dodges that spared fortunate sons like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and almost the entire national Republican leadership from Vietnam: a war they all supported but wanted someone else -- the darkies, the suckers, the poor white trash -- to fight for them.

"While the intention is understandable, the tactic is unsound. For one thing, it's hypocritical; the proposers would be the first to oppose reinstating conscription if the Regime actually called for it -- and rightly so. Even worse, the ploy has introduced the idea of a draft into public discourse. If and when the Regime decides it needs forced conscription to feed its war machine, it can undermine opposition to the measure by pointing to this Democratic "support" for such a move. Naturally, any new draft would retain the old outs for elite offspring. But the Regime could bask in that rosy "bipartisan" glow so beloved by media opinion-makers.

"But for now, Bush still has a couple of million bodies to fling on his foreign fires before he need think about conscripting new ones. So Rumsfeld swatted the question away -- but it was perhaps the very ease of the parry that undid him. Ever the corporate pedant, Rumsfeld couldn't simply dismiss the notion of a draft; he had to explain why it was such a bad idea. His reason? Because the biological material "sucked" into the last draft, during the Vietnam War, was of such "inferior" quality.

"Here the contempt finally broke through the avuncular rictus. Rumsfeld explained that your quality types -- college boys, married guys, teachers and others -- took advantage of "all kinds of exemptions" to skip out on combat. "And what was left" -- not even "who," just "what" -- "was sucked into the intake, trained for a few months, then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services."

"Think about that. "No value." More than 58,000 of these "intake suckers" were left dead on the battlefield; hundreds of thousands more were maimed, scarred, tormented, brutalized, broken -- but they had "no value" to the "United States armed services." No value -- just meaningless biological material to be chewed up in geopolitical games.

"But let's be fair. It's not just American soldiers who are viewed this way by the elite; it's the entire world. This too was revealed at the press briefing, in Rumsfeld's offhand announcement about Special Operations. This, it turned out, was no mere bureaucratic shuffling, but a vast extension of the machinery of "targeted assassination."

"When this dread doctrine was first promulgated by Bush, we were assured its lethal powers would be hedged with strong safeguards; indeed, none but the president himself could be trusted with the final approval of such a draconian step. This was, of course, a lie. CIA officials have already begun assassinating designated terrorist suspects without higher approval, as in Yemen last year. Now Rumsfeld has extended this human hunting license to Special Ops commanders worldwide, who can act on their own bent to kill people accused -- secretly, extrajudicially -- of being terrorists.

"It's all of a piece with the cold-blooded corporate thinking that rules the White House. The bottom line -- augmenting the power and privilege of the entrenched elite -- is all that matters. Any biological material that gets in the way has 'no value.'"

> VVA Outraged By Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's Draft Remarks

"We are deeply disappointed by the Secretary of Defense's disparaging remarks last week regarding Vietnam War draftees. These remarks defame the honorable and distinguished service of over 1.7 million draftees during the Vietnam Era," Vietnam Veterans of America national President Thomas H. Corey said today. "The Secretary's comments are without foundation at best and insulting at worst."

Corey was responding to remarks made Wednesday, January 8, by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that draftees added "no value, no advantage, really, to the United States Armed Services over any sustained period of time."

"Secretary Rumsfeld should know that the Vietnam War could not have continued for 10 years without a military draft of honorable Americans who accepted their military obligation as citizens of this great country," Corey said. "The United States won every military confrontation with the enemy in Vietnam, and that was accomplished with the devoted and often heroic service of many tens of thousands of draftees. Further, a system of military conscription has been used in most of America's wars, including World War II, World War I, and the Civil War."

Rumsfeld made his remarks in response to a call last week by Congressman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to reinstate the draft.

"More than 17,000 of the more than 58,000 men and women whose names are on The Wall were draftees," Corey continued. "It is wrong for anyone to demean their memories and insult their families as the Secretary did last week. Similarly, it is wrong to demean the hundreds of thousands of us who were wounded and disabled as a result of our honorable service. Our service did have value. Most of us went on to make significant contributions to America in civilian life that are valued by our families, our friends, our communities, and by most Americans."

"At a bare minimum, the Secretary owes an apology to the families of those draftees whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and those who served with them," Corey said.

>SECRETARY OF DEFENSE STATEMENT ON THE DRAFT
(Rumsfeld Wiggles)

During a recent press briefing at the Pentagon, a reporter asked my views on the old military draft system. Although not eloquently stated, I responded to the question in part as follows:

"If you think back to when we had the draft, people were brought in, they were paid some fraction of what they could make in the civilian manpower market, because they were without choices. Big categories [of people] were exempted-people that were in college, people that were teaching, people that were married . . . And what was left [those who were not exempted] were sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months and then went out, adding no value, no advantage really, to the United States Armed Services over any sustained period of time, because (of) the churning that took place - it took an enormous amount of effort in terms of training and then they were gone."

Again, my statement was not eloquent. A few columnists and others, though, have suggested that those words were intended to mean that draftees added no value to the military. That is not true. I did not say they added no value while they were serving. They added great value. I was commenting on the loss of that value when they left the service. I certainly had no intention of saying what has been reported, or of leaving that impression. Hundreds of thousands of military draftees served over years with great distinction and valor - many being wounded and still others killed.

The last thing I would want to do would be to disparage the service of those draftees. I always have had the highest respect for their service, and I offer my full apology to any veteran who misinterpreted my remarks when I said them, or who may have read any of the articles or columns that have attempted to take my words and suggest they were disparaging.

The intent of my comments was to reflect a view I have held for some time: that we should lengthen tours of duty and careers for our all-volunteer forces, so that these highly trained men and women in uniform can serve in specific assignments longer, and also not be forced to leave the service when they are at the peak of their skills and knowledge.

It is painful for anyone, and certainly a public servant whose words are carried far and wide, to have a comment so unfortunately misinterpreted.

It is particularly troubling for me that there are truly outstanding men and women in uniform or their families -- past and present -- who may believe that the Secretary of Defense would say or mean what some have written. I did not. I would not.

I hope this deeply felt statement reaches those who have served those who are serving, and their families.

[Web version: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2003/b01212003_bt029-03.html]