--- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm not saying Gautam is wrong, I trust that he > knows what he's talking > about in this instance, but I don't want to be > caught off guard either. > > -- > Doug
Thanks, Doug. Just a note - the Washington Post ran an article on the possibility just before the election. Quite a few Republicans (myself included, actually) thought it was a clear attempt to help the Kerry campaign (and thus somewhat out of character for the usually excellent Post, and particularly so for Tom Ricks, the best defense reporter in the business now that Rick Atkinson is writing books instead of reporting) by stirring up draft rumors before the election. Nonetheless, the article was overwhelming that the chance for a draft was very low to nonexistent. The URL is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A440-2004Oct26.html I do note that they didn't ask talk to some of the people I would have expected them to talk to - Harvey Sapolsky and Cindy Williams at MIT, for example, or Charlie Moskos at Northwestern. My guess is that this is because the Post knew what they would say and it didn't fit with the storyline that they wanted. I don't know what Moskos would say, but I do know that Sapolsky and Cindy think that there is basically no chance of one happening. There's an old statistics joke that at 4-sigma we see the Second Coming. Well, I'd say that the draft would be a 5-sigma event. I think it would take a direct threat to the homeland of the US by a currently inconceivable threat (alien invasion!) in which case most people would, I think, be in favor of one anyways. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
