The Defense Department is encouraging American citizens older than 18 to register to volunteer… The Defense Department is encouraging American citizens older than 18 to register to volunteer for their local draft boards – the body that decides who is draft-exempt, should the draft be reinstated – on a departmental Web site, according to the British Broadcasting Corp.

Up to 80 percent of draft board positions are vacant. So perhaps the Defense Department just wants to fill the vacancies. Reasonable enough, right?

Currently, there is no draft in effect in the United States, nor has there been one since 1973, when Congress ended the practice and the United States pulled out of Vietnam. Despite mounting American casualties in Iraq and waning support of U.S. occupation at home, Pentagon officials deny that a reinstatement of the draft is anywhere on the horizon.

Why, then, canvass for volunteers for the draft boards? It’s outrageous that even 20 percent of the positions are filled. If no draft is forthcoming, there would seem to be no need for groups to decide who can be exempted from a draft. It’s like a fast food restaurant hiring someone, giving them a headset and stationing them along a lonely stretch of highway so they can take drive-through orders for triple lardburgers, if any customers just happen along – sort of silly and futile, not to mention wasteful.

To serve on a draft board, a citizen has to initially undergo 12 hours of training, followed by annual four-hour refresher courses. Someone has to pay for that training – the same someone, namely taxpayers, who just forked over $87 billion for a nebulous rebuilding plan for Iraq.

Soldiers are dying in Iraq, with no end in sight. Our military is facing urban guerilla warfare on unknown territory. Americans, rightly so, are reluctant to volunteer for the military right now.

It’s far too soon to imply that the government is planning to reinstate the draft. It would be irresponsible to start pointing fingers in that direction – yet. But it’s hackle-raising news nonetheless, and ironic, coming from a department headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who insulted drafted American G.I.’s in Vietnam, saying they “add[ed] no value, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time.”

We can only hope that, this time around, there will be no need for “useless” draftees to give their time, effort and possibly lives to a dubious conflict.