Medical Draft?

On October 19, 2004, the NY Times ran an article titled, “U.S. Has Contingency Plans for a Draft of Medical Workers”. This was in the heat of the presidential campaign and was mostly dismissed as the “liberal media’s” attempt to undermine Pres. Bush. The Pentagon denied needing such a draft, but did not deny planning for one. The initial article was based on Selective Service System documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests. These documents can be viewed at The Blatant Truth.

The Blatant Truth writes:

In short, if a Skills Draft and Medical Draft are authorized by Bush and the Republican Congress in 2005, nearly 40 million young people and a somewhat overlapping 13.5 million doctors, nurses and specialists ages 20–44 will have to go to their local Post Office and register with the IRS. The form will have on it a list of several hundred skills for the skills draft, and at least 61 medical specialties for the Medical Draft form, probably along with a host of other medical occupations, from dental lab technician to health forms processor. Under penalty of a $250,000 fine, these tens of millions of Americans will “self-declare” their name, address, and all of their skills—and they could be drafted for any one of them—by writing down the coded number for that occupation. (emphasis added)

Less than two weeks from now, SSS will report to the Pentagon that they’re all set to go. Sherlock Google at DailyKos writes:

On March 31st, the Director of the Selective Service System (the SSS) is due to report to the Pentagon that the agency is ready to open 1,980 draft board offices around the country and be ready to operate lotteries by June 15th.

Let’s just hope that Sherlock is mistaken. The guys in power would never think about bringing back the Draft. This is just normal contingency planning, right Mr. President?