Americans overwhelmingly oppose reinstatement of the military draft and most say they wouldn't encourage their children to enlist in the service either, an AP-Ipsos poll found.
That resistance underscores the dilemma facing US President George W. Bush's administration as it struggles to recruit a volunteer military in wartime.
The US army is falling short of its recruiting goals this year at a time the country is fighting extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The army has repeatedly missed its monthly recruiting goals this year, falling short by 42 percent in April.
And all four branches of military service are having trouble attracting recruits to their reserve forces.
Despite the recruiting problems, seven in 10 Americans say they oppose reinstatement of the draft, and almost half of those polled strongly oppose that step, the AP-Ipsos poll found. About one-quarter of the people in this country say they favor reinstating the draft.
More than 1,700 members of the US military have died since the start of the Iraq war and thousands more have been wounded.
General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, told members of Congress on Thursday that the Iraqi insurgency is as active as six months ago and more foreign fighters are flowing in all the time.
The shortfalls in military recruiting have led to speculation that the government might be forced to reinstitute the draft. But US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ruled it out, saying the all-volunteer force has proved the wisdom of discontinuing the draft in 1973.
"There isn't a chance in the world that the draft will be brought back," Rumsfeld told a House hearing on Thursday.
The army has responded to the recruiting slump by increasing the number of recruiters and offering bigger sign-up bonuses.
More than half of those polled said that they would discourage a son from enlisting in the military, while two-thirds said they would discourage a daughter from joining.
If a military draft were to be reinstated, more than half in the poll, 54 percent, said that they would oppose women being drafted.
Men were more likely than women to favor reinstating the draft, those over age 50 were more likely to favor it than younger adults.
And Republicans were more likely than Democrats to support the idea. But a majority of each of those groups opposed the draft.
``The draft has never been popular and there's little reason to believe it would be popular now,'' public opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman said.
The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted from Monday until Wednesday for the AP by Ipsos, an international polling firm.
The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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