Bush: No draft on my watch
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- President Bush Friday told a town-hall meeting in St. Louis rumors of a return of the military draft are completely false.
"We're not going to have a draft, period. The all-volunteer Army works," Bush said. "An all-volunteer Army is best suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century, which is to be specialized and to find these people as they hide around the world. We don't need mass armies anymore."
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who also opposes a draft, rebutted by saying a backdoor draft is already in place under President Bush.
"Our military is overextended under the president. Our Guard and Reserves have been turned into almost active duty. You've got people doing two and three rotations. You've got stop-loss policies so people can't get out when they were supposed to. You've got a backdoor draft right now."
Bush defended his position by saying he is taking steps to make draft unnecessary by adopting new technologies.
"For example, we're flying unmanned vehicles that can send real-time messages to stations in the United States. That saves manpower and it saves equipment. It also means that we can target things easier and move more quickly, which means we need to be lighter, and quicker, and more facile, and highly trained."
Kerry said to strengthen the military he would add 40,000 active duty forces while making changes in foreign policy by building stronger alliances.
"We're not going to go unilaterally. We're not going alone like this president did," Kerry said.
Bush, Kerry spar in Iraqi WMD
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. John Kerry and President Bush disagreed during Friday's St. Louis debate on whether U.N. sanctions worked against Saddam Hussein.
Citing the Duefler report released Wednesday, Kerry said Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.
"The goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam Hussein, it was to remove the weapons of mass destruction," Kerry said.
But Bush emphasized Saddam's intent to develop a weapons arsenal.
"Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies," Bush said. "Sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein."
JFK airport cuts overtime for security
NEW YORK, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Some Port Authority cops say the PA's move to cut overtime for police at Kennedy Airport leaves key security posts created after Sept. 11, 2001, unfilled.
Despite the federal government's warning that terrorists intend to strike in the United States in the weeks before the Nov. 2 presidential election, a money-saving measure restricting overtime was put in place this week by the authority, which manages and maintains the bridges and tunnels between New York and New Jersey, the New York area airports and bus terminals and seaports.
"With all the terrorist talk, it's not prudent that they do it now. They are cutting a lot more posts, more posts than is responsible," a veteran Port Authority policeman told the New York Daily News.
"If you can't do it on straight time, it won't be covered. And there aren't enough cops to do it on straight time, so it's not being covered," said another policeman.
A "patrol tactics" memo obtained by the paper indicates positions now banned from making use of overtime include officers who safeguard runways and passenger-dropoff zones.
Another post stripped of overtime surveillance is the officer responsible for watching Israel's El Al Airline counter.
Martian salts could be absorbing water
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Epsom-like salts thought to be common on Mars may be harboring much of the planet's water, U.S. scientists said.
Geologists at Indiana University and Los Alamos National Laboratory, studying data from the twin Mars Exploration Rovers and from the Pathfinder lander and Odyssey orbiter, found magnesium sulfate salts exist in abundance on the planet's surface. Those salts could be holding a great deal of water and perhaps explain why Mars -- where recent evidence has showed water once flowed -- is so dry now.
The scientists used an experimental chamber to study how changes in temperature, pressure and humidity affected different types of magnesium salts over time. They found that under Mars-like conditions, some of the salts could absorb considerable amounts of water.
"The Mars Odyssey orbiter recently showed that there may be as much as 10 percent water hidden in the Martian near-surface," said David Bish, co-author of the study. "We were able to show that under Mars-like conditions, magnesium sulfate salts can contain a great deal of water. Our findings also suggest that the kinds of sulfates we find on Mars could give us a lot of insight into the history of water and mineral formation there."
