This article reports Vice-President Cheney’s comments on the prospect of a military draft (our topic du jour):

“At a campaign appearance in Oregon last week, Vice President Dick Cheney said the all-volunteer military remains America’s best option and it would take a crisis ‘on the scale of World War II before I would think that anybody would seriously contemplate the possibility of going back again to the draft.’”

This is a striking admission; obviously, no matter what their intentions, no candidate is going to endorse the idea of a return to the draft. But Cheney actually specifies circumstances under which his Administration would support it. If we now recall how often the right-wing analogized Saddam to Hitler, and we recall some of the horrific scenarios that may be on the horizon, this may be as close to an admission of intent that we will get until the time comes.

UPDATE: An e-mail from a colleague elsewhere leads me to offer the following clarificatory remark: considered in isolation from all the other evidence, Cheney’s comment would be meaningless; in context, it is less so. The problem is we have already seen specious analogies to WWII (e.g., “appeasing” Saddam is just like “appeasing” Hitler); we are already involved in a “world war”; and so on. That is all I wanted to remark on.