"Parsed Lies" And a Bush Draft

I've been figuring that rumors of a draft in a second Bush term are pretty alarmist.  It'd make Bush (and thus Jeb, the Anointed One) unpopular, we figure.  And besides, if he does it, he'll be called on it, because he'd have lied.

Or has he?

Remember that Bush has been master of the "parsed lie" -- sounding like he's saying one thing when he's really not.

So I went and searched a bit.  What I found were interesting quotes and interesting unquotes.

Kerry and Edwards are unequivocal: "there will be no draft in a Kerry administration".

But what do I see in the news from the Bush people?

• Consistent talking points that a draft is "neither necessary nor desirable".
  
• Statements like "we do not need a draft."
  
• Statements like "The war in Iraq will be fought with an all-volunteer army."

What don't we get?  What we don't get is a simple statement that "there will be no draft".  We get told nice little implied denials -- that a draft isn't desirable, that we don't need it, that the current war will be fought without one. We're given reasons for why one wouldn't think there would be a draft, and overly parsed specific denials to a question not quite asked about the specific war we're fighting right now.

What we don't get is a statement that there won't be a draft.

I'm probably giving them too much credit. It's more likely that the cutesy dancing around the denial is just habit, and they're not concealing a grand plan to reinstate the draft. (They're not bothering to conceal, or plan for, much of anything, are they.)

Since after all there's nothing to keep them from out-and-out lying -- the press has been complicit with a number of administraiton lies, what's one more? They'd have much more to gain from an explicit denial now. It'd go down the memory hole if we got attacked again (and given how leaky our border security is -- because, of course, we don't want to hear how we'd pay for it -- another attack seems pretty likely), and they'll just say "August 10th (or whatever day the next major attack is) changed everything", and a stunned press will go along with how necessary a draft now has become, because we have to go invade Syria and Iran to catch all those Saudi terrorists who keep attacking us.