If you look at http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_draft_070204,00.html

military experts say that conscription would hurt the quality and morale of the armed forces.

The people pushing for a draft where members of the Congressional Black Caucus such as Charles Rangel while there has been no push from people in the military for a draft.

Also, her misuse of terms including the use of the word troops instead of soldiers or Marines should be a huge red flag for people. Also, the total lack of any detail should be a red flag. The caller are like those people who give interviews where they claim to be long time Republicans but when people check, they fing out that they have only donated to Democratic candidates.

You claim she is black without any evidence.

You claim that since she is black it is unlikely that her husband would be serving a combat role, without any evidence.

Personally I felt her call lacks merit because the draft won’t solve the problem. But I don’t feel the need to question her legitimacy. It doesn’t much matter whether she was being honest or not.

What I don’t much care for is your attempt to marginalize her because of her presumed race and some bizarre belief that the presumed same race husband is unlikely to be in a combat arm. Did you serve? Because if you did I would like to know what MOS you served in.

I believe that the caller had a hidden agenda and used the victim card to make a partisan political point. If activist are using C-SPAN call to make a partisan political point, they should be answered quickly and then ignored. I suspect that Kristol thought she was an activist caller but there is just no easy way to answer someone who is claiming to be a victim.

. Aren’t you saying that the caller is just a black female who most likely votes Democrat- so Kristol is justified in ignoring the call?

That is why I totally suspect the call. however, If she said that her husband is with the 1/16 infantry in the 1st Infantry Division and that the current deployment schedule was wearing out the soldiers, I would agree that she really is a military spouse.

My first impression, in fact, was that she was ‘white trash,’ precisely because she avoids double negatives, and other black colloquialisms. The structure does not parse ebonically. A second listen confirmed that.

Could this be an ‘educated’ black caller- in terms of speech patterns? Perhaps.

But, the most interesting thing is that you feel this has any relevance to her stated position, which was eloquent enough to make Kristol unsuccesfully reach into his empty bag of platitudes.

It says far more about your attitudes than what you perceive of hers.

She also avoided any details such as whether her spouse (the term spounse instead of wife would have sounded more conviencing) was in the Army or Marines, what unit he was in, what post she was at, and where in Iraq he was at. She used the word tour instead of rotation or deployment. She used the term troops that no Army or Marine spouse would use.

There is also no one in the military who wants a draft. That should be a dead giveway of an activist caller. I may be wrong but such a practiced and skilled caller should be viewed with suspicious. Of course, she played the activist playbook perfectly in claiming that she was a victim and thus no one should question anything about her.

You either do not know accents, or you’re living in a dream world. The caller could be black, but not via any accent.

Gives some new insight to your paranoia about Dems becoming a one party monopoly that takes over the nation.

I’m still aghast at W. Kristol for his deluded op-ed in the Washington Post this past summer.

Key to understanding this post, is the juxtaposition of a war supporter and planner, who refuses to recognize the limitations of the military, with someone whose family is living out the consequences of his pro-war cheerleading. You missed the point.

I think you’re way off base here. I was “dual military” with my wife before I left the service (my wife is still in) and I didn’t hear anything that would indicate the caller was not what she claimed.

Furthermore, in most cases, one can’t simply “quit” the military. We don’t know the rank and time-in-service of the caller’s husband, so it’s impossible to say for certain. You are simply assuming her spouse is able to quit. Even so, it’s one thing to sign up expecting to go to Iraq, it’s quite another to sign up for 4 years and spent over two of those years in Iraq with another year preparing to go. The simply fact is that the Army is broken and the 15/12 deployment cycle and neverending deployments have a lot to do with it.

Finally, you assume the caller is black, but more than that go on to assume that her spouse isn’t in a “combat unit” because he is black – another assumption. You don’t know the race of the caller nor the race of the spouse. Furthermore, the assertion that a small minority of blacks serve in “combat units” is, I believe, completely unsupported. And what do you mean by “combat units” anyway? The units in Iraq are restructured BCT’s which combine elements of CA, CS and CSS.

How do you know the caller was black and why does that have any bearing on whether her husband would be in a combat role or not?

Whether her husband does or does not want to server in the Army or in Iraq is irrelevant. She was talking about her own views not his.

If her husband did not want to serve in Iraq he would have quit the military. And since the caller was black, the likelihood that her husband is in a combat unit is very, very low.

Meanwhile, Kristol sits on his padded leather office chair in his comfortable, air-conditioned office, and types out the drivel that keeps this war going. He will never suffer any consequences for what he and other neocons help set in motion.

Our troops and their families have done more than enough, trying to carry out a poorly-devised, short-sighted Iraq War policy.