The "NAFTA draft".

In May, the Bush administration and its media mouthpieces--Rush, Hannity, Fox News, et al.--touted the Labor Department's report that 288,000 new jobs were created in April. At one campaign stop in Dubuque, President Bush appeared to say that he had willed those jobs into existence through the force of his optimism: "The president has to make sure that we're optimistic and confident in order for jobs to be created."

"Some jobs, however, are more responsive than others to the power of positive presidential thinking," commented British journalist Naomi Klein in the May 18 London Guardian. "More than 82% of the jobs created in April were in service industries, including restaurants and retail. The biggest new employers were temp agencies. Over the past year, 272,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. No wonder the president's economic report in February floated the idea of reclassifying fast-food restaurants as factories."

The prison system is another growth industry, notes Klein: "With more than 2 million Americans behind bars, the number of prison guards has exploded--from 270,317 in 2000 to 476,000 in 2002." That figure includes several of the reservists implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

"The young soldiers taking the fall for the prison abuse scandal are the McWorkers, prison guards and laid-off factory workers of Bush's so-called economic recovery," writes Klein. "The resumes of the soldiers facing abuse charges come straight out of the April U.S. Labor Department report." Particularly noteworthy is the case of Sergeant Ivan Frederick, a prison guard from Virginia who "had a decent job at the Bausch and Lomb factory in Mountain Lake, Maryland"--before it closed down and reopened in Mexico.

For many Americans in communities left devastated as manufacturing jobs move off-shore, the military "has positioned itself as the bridge across America's growing class chasm," Klein contends. "Call it the NAFTA draft."