This is going to go over big

For the first time since Gulf War I,

[t]he Army is preparing to notify about 5,600 retired and discharged soldiers who are not members of the National Guard or Reserve that they will be involuntarily recalled to active duty for possible service in Iraq or Afghanistan,

AP reported on Tuesday.

The pool, known as the Individual Ready Reserve, includes any former enlisted soldier who did less than eight years of active service and officers who have not resigned their commissions. Because they're not in the Reserve (or the National Guard) they don't do regular training and are not part of any particular unit - so they'll be assigned to units according to the Army's determination of need.

I expect this will be used to again raise the specter of a renewed draft. Despite the rumors blowing around, there is no immediate prospect of a reinstatement of the draft. For one thing, Selective Service just doesn't have the money: It's current budget is $26.3 million, about the same as it's gotten the last several years.

That's not to say there is no prospect of a return to the bad old days: Note that I said "immediate." Donald Rumsfeld has insisted there is no need for a draft and that recruitment is going just fine, thank you very much - but it's hard to take that at face value because, as the International Herald Tribune for July 1 points out, saying otherwise in an election year "could be political suicide."

And there is still the fact of what got the rumors going in the first place: The Pentagon was advertising for civilians to fill empty spaces on local draft boards. Now, of course the boards themselves are nothing new and have existed as long as the draft system has, but since the boards really had nothing to do, no one seemed concerned about filling vacancies - until last fall. That made people think there was something afoot and it does suggest to me that even if there are no current plans to bring back the draft, still there is a sense of "just in case" in at least some planners' minds. Otherwise, why care about the vacancies?

And after all, as draft-enthusiast Rep. Charles Rangel says, sooner or later we're going to run out of bodies. But we can safely assume nothing will be done before the election.