Adverse selection

Today's New York Times feels the need to provide source protection for this anecdote in an Iraq-Vietnam analogy story --

In private, Mr. Bush says there is another big difference between then and now — the draft. There is little question that by signing up to be a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, the risk was low that he would end up in Vietnam as a 23-year-old. But according to an academic called into the White House recently, Mr. Bush said the administration could never have sustained this effort in Iraq, politically, without an all-volunteer force. He declined to be named because he was relaying a private conversation.

But there is no need for the anonymity or lack of a direct quote, because Bush has been more explicit himself about why this is so: a the conscript army in Vietnam didn't understand the stakes --

Secondly -- which is different from Vietnam -- secondly, in terms of our troops, this is a volunteer Army. Vietnam wasn't a volunteer Army, as you know. And in this volunteer Army, people -- the troops understand the consequences of Iraq in the global war on terror.

The extent to which this inference of stupid conscripts was buried by the media apparently now extends to attaching a veneer of secrecy to other people who report him saying the same thing. The fetishisation of an all-volunteer army probably also explains why this particular Milton Friedman proposal was elevated to prime position in the White House statement marking his death.