NY Times: Draft agency must ready for the 'unforeseen'

Mike SheehanPublished: Saturday December 23, 2006

A spokesperson for the Selective Service System is downplaying reports of a "test" of its military draft equipment, but its director says the system needs to be ready "just in case," The New York Times will report on the front page of its Saturday edition.

SS media contact Dick Flahavan tells Eric Lichtblau that, following articles on the draft exercise, "his office [has] fielded dozens of inquiries, not just from reporters but from some anxious parents as well, all with some variation of the same urgent question: Are you reinstituting the draft?"

Flahavan vehemently denies the report, so much so that "No Draft on Horizon!" appears at the top of SS website, writes Lichtblau. [RAW STORY has confirmed this, see image above; click here to see site.]

The director of the federal draft agency, William A. Chatfield, remarked however that the Selective Service "needs to be ready 'if something totally unforeseen should come upon us,'" according to the Times article.

Still, chances of a draft are, in Chatfield's assessment, "very, very, very low. ... There's nothing even being discussed in a remote fashion, but you have people trying to create fear when there's nothing there."

Lichtblau also noted that Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) will "try again" to present a bill reinstating the draft, "calling attention to what he sees as social and economic inequities in the volunteer military." The House of Representatives rejected his first draft bill in 2004 by an almost unanimous vote of 402-2.

Excerpts from the registration-restricted article follow...