What does the Selective Service System do?

Mr Moto, Picker, what do you say to an “Ask the Selective Service Guys” thread in a little while, when you’ve started work for the board?

I didn’t think you would have much leeway, Mr. Moto. And, as has been said before, I pray neither you, nor Picker ever get called upon to actually discharge these duties. (Or I, for that matter, as I just applied, myself.) On the other hand, if a draft does get enacted, those standards have to be fairly applied to everyone, and honestly - I have more faith in Dopers than I do in the general populace. <shrug>

In the late '70s, we had a Brazilian exchange student spent a summer with us. While he was here, he obtained an “international driver’s license,” so he could drive here. I guess that put his name in some kind of database . . . After he left, we got a letter from the Selective Service notifying him of his obligation to register for the draft – the U.S. draft. Apparently the SS, like the IRS, casts its net as wide as it possibly can.

In 1989, while I was working at a newspaper in DeLand, Florida, there was a story in the paper: “Disabled, decorated vet gets draft notice.” Apparently, Selective Service sent a simlar registration-demand letter to a WWII vet who had been in a wheelchair ever since the Battle of the Bulge. It got a big laugh down at the VFW hall: “So, John, when are you going to enlist?”

Sure, I’m in. Although if the SS Board moves as slow as the Army bureaucracy I remember, it’ll probably be a while before I actually do anything… :slight_smile:

I’m up for it, after training in the fall.