Paul Krugman has decided to help mainstream the draft scare. Leave aside the fact that nobody wants a draft, that the left-wing Congressmen who introduced the idea voted against it when it was put to a vote, that it was dreamt up as a way of scaring a very pro-Bush 18-30-year-old demographic into voting for Kerry. It took less time to mainstream this argument than it did to mainstream the idea that Israel ordered into action in Iraq.

Krugman claims that since Bush brought on a deficit while denying he would do so, so he will bring on a draft while denying it. Of course, Bush's tax cuts helped prevent a far worse deficit, which was actually caused by the recession alreadu underway. Krugman never even lists the as-yet-present-but-unreported recesssion happening at the time as a reason for the deficit.

The equivalent events in his argument won't be the factors he's laid out, but some pressing need for much broader, much more immediate military action, and a national mobilization. (A draft was necessary during WWI and WWII, after all.)

I'm supposed to take a comparative economic-military analysis from an economist who 1) couldn't see, and 2) doesn't understand the effects of, a recession?