Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Kerry's draft lie

Jack Kelly:

Two recent polls indicate the presidential race has tightened again to within the margin of error. John Kerry made it clear that this isn't true in a speech in Florida Sept. 22.

In response to a question after a speech in West Palm Beach, Kerry said President Bush might bring back the military draft if he is re-elected.

This has become a meme among Democrats.

"There will be no draft when John Kerry is president," said vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

"America will reinstate the military draft" if Bush is re-elected, said former Sen. Max Cleland, a Kerry surrogate, in a speech at Colorado College.

"I think that George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term, and any young person who doesn't want to go to Iraq might think twice about voting for him," said former Kerry rival Howard Dean at a speech at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Web logger Betsy Newmark said that college students at the University of Arizona have been getting an e-mail that says: "There is pending legislation in the House and Senate, S 80 and HR 163, to reinstate mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages 18-26) starting June 15, 2005. This plan includes women in the draft, eliminates higher education as a shelter, and makes it difficult to cross into Canada.

"The Bush administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections. The Bush administration plans to begin mandatory draft in the spring of 2005, just after the 2004 presidential election."

There are bills in the House and Senate calling for reinstitution of conscription. They have attracted a handful of sponsors and cosponsors, all of whom are Democrats.

The bills are going nowhere, because the Bush administration strongly opposes them, as do about three-quarters of the members of Congress.

President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have said repeatedly that America does not need a draft to fight the war on terror.

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The draft is an artifact of a bygone era. We would sooner bring back the musket or the crossbow than the draft, because military leaders recognize the U.S. armed forces are the best in the world in large part because they are all volunteer.

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Kerry's lie about the draft is of a parcel with Democratic claims to seniors that Republicans will end Social Security, or to blacks that Republicans will bring back segregation. It is as much a sign of desperation as it is of a lack of integrity

Before Bill Clinton cut the military to its current size, we had a much larger all voluntary military. Many of those who were subjected to the reduction in force, would have preferred to stay in the military. There has been no evidence that the military has not been able to meet its recruiting goals since the war started. Republicans who control the House and Senate, should bring the Democrat bills to a vote and vote them down and show the country that the only people in favor of the draft are Democrats.

Kerry's manic obsession

Investor's Business Daily Editorial:

Politics: Sen. John Kerry and his crew have proved Sen. Zell Miller right. They really will say anything to get elected, even if that means undermining a courageous ally and greasing the skids to defeat in Iraq.

It was the renegade Democrat Miller who roused the 2004 Republican convention and raised the ire of the taste police with lines like these:

"Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief."

Strong stuff. At the time, even some on the GOP side suggested that Miller had gone too far. But after the events of the past week, we're wondering if he might not have gone far enough.

That "manic obsession" described by Miller has so consumed Kerry and his campaign aides that they don't seem to care how much harm they do to the national interest or to America's allies.

One of those allies, maybe the most important one at this point, is Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Allawi is a true hero, a man who has stepped forward for the hazardous mission of forming an effective Iraqi government and shepherding the nation toward democracy. Terrorists have marked him for death. Even critics of President Bush's policies owe Allawi some respect.

They owe him support as well. If he fails, Iraq would slide closer to chaos, and the danger to U.S. troops and civilians would rise accordingly. Whether the goal is to win or just get out unscathed, it would be harder to achieve.

So how did the Democratic presidential nominee show his respect and support for Allawi? By snubbing his Thursday speech to Congress (along with a number of other Democrats) and, as soon as it ended, calling him little better than a liar and a lap dog.

It was an insult as ignoble as Kerry's description of the coalition allies as "the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted."

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What might Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and our other enemies make of such comments? Kerry and Lockhart have played into their hands. To the extent that the Kerry campaign's view of Allawi gets around in Iraq, it will weaken the prime minister's government. It's never helpful to a leader to be seen as anyone's puppet, yet here's Kerry and his crew calling Allawi just that.

Are we saying that the Kerry campaign is deliberately seeking to undermine Allawi, destabilize Iraq, embolden terrorists and bring about a U.S. defeat?

No. But Kerry's insulting treatment of a key ally shows him to be irresponsible, graceless and obsessively bent on winning office at all costs. Three little words come to mind: unfit to serve.