Word: conscripts
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From the first, Kerrey saw his role as more than that of a cash machine; he needed to conscript a few good candidates. A record eight Democrats were retiring, and pundits were predicting that the Republicans would increase their advantage. Kerrey wanted Democrats who could win, and to that end he appears to have sought out candidates in his own image: hardheaded businessmen who understood the necessity of reforming entitlements. If the Senate is a kind of state-by-state referendum on the size and scope of government, Kerrey wanted pragmatists the Republicans would have a hard time branding...
...conquered, however brutal and bloody. In fact, at week's end Russian shells had set the presidential palace in Grozny ablaze and troops were reportedly massing for a new offensive -- this time to be led by specially trained spetsnaz forces rather than the hastily assembled and ill- prepared conscript units...
...Josip Broz Tito built during World War II threatens to fracture along the very ethnic lines that have created Yugoslavia's current miasma. Led by a cadre of generals who are the last bastion of hard-line communism in the country, the officer corps is predominantly Serbian, while the conscript ranks reflect the multiethnic complexion of the Yugoslav federation. Among the 2,300 troops captured by the Slovenes were hundreds who had turned themselves in, testimony to the lack of resolve within the ranks. Many of the troops fighting in Slovenia are raw recruits called up this year. Reflecting...
...many Americans came to regard the U.S. officer class as a band of dissemblers and incompetents. As for the grunts, their ranks had long been considered a repository for society's dropouts. From the Revolutionary War to the early 1900s, it was not only common but legal for a conscript to pay someone else to take his place in the armed forces. Some criminal court judges even sentenced miscreants to military service...
...consequence, says Anthony Cordesman, professor of national-security studies at Georgetown University (and now something of a minor celebrity as a result of his sophisticated military analysis on ABC television), the Pentagon can boast of "an unprecedented level of professionalism that in every way is superior to the old conscript." This, says Cordesman, has bred "a new civil-military relationship" that permitted Schwarzkopf and his commanders to pursue their goals with a minimum of political interference...