DOES THE U.S. NEED THE DRAFT?

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Over the course of the U.S. adventure in Iraq, military commanders and Bush Administration officials have been united in their insistence that they have enough troops to win the war, despite the fact that parts of the country have slipped out of the control of the U.S. and its Iraqi allies as the insurgency has grown in ferocity. The consensus seemed to crumble last week, when L. Paul Bremer III, former top U.S. official in Iraq, told a West Virginia audience that "we never had enough troops on the ground" to prevent the looting and chaos that wracked Baghdad after the U.S. invasion last spring. Bremer later scrambled to amend his remarks, contending that whatever the shortfalls last spring, the U.S. now had sufficient numbers in Iraq. But his comments emboldened critics like Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry who blast the Administration for mismanaging the war, and added to nervousness about the military's high-stakes offensive to seize control of the Sunni triangle from the insurgents in time for nationwide elections in January. U.S. officials say that as part of the strategy, the interim Iraqi government will try to win over the rebel-controlled towns by pouring security personnel and reconstruction funds into them, hoping to wean local residents from their support of the insurgents. If that doesn't work--and if the central government is unable to negotiate peace with the guerrillas--the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies are prepared to attack.

The war, in other words, could well get bloodier. The Pentagon is rushing to train 200,000 Iraqi troops to take over combat duties by next August, but meanwhile the U.S. military is trapped in a nation-building marathon that the Army is ill prepared to carry out. Among some Americans, the prospect of an open-ended U.S. commitment in Iraq has heightened anxieties that manpower shortages may lead the Pentagon to reinstitute the draft. The heat of the presidential campaign has kept the rumors alive, which may prove costly to George W. Bush.

In a TIME poll taken before the second debate, 42% of those surveyed said they believe that if Bush is re-elected he will reinstitute the draft, while only 21% believe Kerry would. Pentagon officials, field commanders and both presidential candidates insist a draft is neither necessary nor desirable and that the U.S. can maintain its commitments with an all-volunteer Army. "We're not going to have a draft--period," Bush said in last Friday's debate. Yet speculation about the looming return of conscription has become so rampant that House Republicans last week tried to dispel the rumors by forcing a vote on a no-hope bill to reinstate the draft. (It lost, 402 to 2.) "We've got 295 million people in this country," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said before the vote. "We don't need a draft."