No Draft? Ship in the Wounded:

In an article entitled "Injured troops shipped back into battle," Mark Benjamin reports that Salon.com has uncovered hard evidence that Army doctors are downgrading the paper work of soldiers so that they can be shipped by to Iraq for "the surge." Benjamin reports that

Hunter Smart, who until recently was a captain in the 3rd Brigade, has experience preparing unit status reports. These detailed accounts showing how many soldiers in a unit are able to deploy to a war zone, make their way up to decision makers in the Pentagon. Smart says he believes brigade commanders were manipulating the reports and pressing injured soldiers to deploy to Iraq. "The unit status report is a big deal," Hunter explained in a phone interview. "You list by name and number the number of soldiers that are hurt and non-deployable," he said. "There was a concerted effort to keep those numbers down."

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Military commanders "could care less about the soldier's physical and mental welfare, as long as they can shoot straight," Smart said. "Our military is stretched to its breaking point," he added. "Commanders are being backed into a corner in order to produce units that on paper are ready to deploy. They are casting the moral and ethical implications -- and soldiers -- to the side."

Of course, if there were a draft, there would be no war to ship soldiers to.