Recall

Reuters reports that 2500 retired U.S. Marines will be ripped away from their lives and families to fill a shortfall in volunteer recruiting. This is called an "involuntary recall" and affects service men and women who did their four years of active duty and are now in reserve, a status from which they can voluntarily re-activate or, involuntarily only with a Presidente's signature, be reactivated.

There's a pool of 35,000 such inactive Marines but the recall limit at any one time is 2500. Once again, George W. Bush is breaking the bank, or as close to it as he can. They most revealing graf from the article:

But the number of Marines volunteering outside their active-duty service requirement has been steadily declining for two years, according to Stratton, who said could not offer an explanation.

The Marine Corps' authority to involuntarily recall Marines for jobs in the "Global War on Terror" -- a war whose parameters remain largely undefined -- has no expiration date.

"The authority is until GWOT is over with," Stratton said. "Until we're told to do otherwise, we'll use it."

The Marine Corps' move comes almost five years after the September 11 attacks that led the United States to declare a war on global terrorism and more than three years after the Iraq war began.

First off, can anyone give Col. Stratton the reason why the number of volunteers has been declining? Let's not always see the same hands...

Then there's the GWOT. Is this a crazy euphemism for remaking the Islamic world so they like us? Using airpower and guns to do so?

As future U.S. President (you read it here first) Paul Hackett so vigorously affirms in this wild clip from tonight's Hardball, terror is a tactic or even a strategy; it is not a philosophy -- or even an enemy.

Hell, we even practice terrorism, when we bomb a country like Iraq into submission, or as Israel did by bombing so much of Lebanon this past month in an attempt to make the Lebanese people reject Hezbollah.

Hackett is my kind of Democrat -- Alpha. He takes down this pathetic Republican rich kid from Texas who spouts GOP talking points like he's got no ideas of his own.

We'll probably see the sycophant suck-up as a smug Vice Presidential candidate in 15 years. Those GOP bastards just never seem to go away.