This is in response to Saalim Carter's letter about how a wide-sweeping draft would help the war ("Draft would benefit war," March 22). That is an unrealistic concept. College deferments exist for a reason -- to ensure that American society has a constant supply of people in skilled occupations.

If you drafted all the medical students, who would be doctors? If you drafted all the engineering/science students, who would develop the products to make our lives better? If you drafted all the history majors, who would manage our fast food restaurants? War sucks, and there are a lot of brave people who volunteered to fight in it, regardless of social class or occupation.

Those people deserve our respect and admiration. The fact is that unless a horde of communist Chinese troops storms across our borders, there are those whose skills are more useful in the operating room, or behind the desk or in the laboratory.

Drafting college students would have no benefit to the war or to American society as a whole. This is just another example of the anti-war, anti-Bush crowd's willingness to cut their nose off to spite their face.