The Selective Service and Widmeyer held focus groups this summer to sample public opinion toward registration and a possible draft including medical personnel. People from a variety of professions, including doctors and nurses, were questioned.

The report summarized the findings this way:

• There was substantial resistance to the notion of a call-up of civilian professionals that would send draftees to foreign soil."

• draft of civilian professionals was seen as unworkable because "training would be inadequate to transform groups of people who had never worked together into cohesive units."

• People are apprehensive about the length of service that might be required. The "occupation of Iraq has proved more costly, in terms of dollars and lives, than most Americans expected." Members of the National Guard are "serving tours of duty far longer than many ever anticipated."

• People believe the government has the ability to "find whomever it needs" in a crisis, by using a "master database" if necessary.

You know the old saying, "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile." How long after a "special skills draft" do you think it will take for the Administration to expand it to a military draft?

We first wrote about the plan back in May. Here's an actual copy the plan (pdf).