Scope of deployments changes Guard

[UpInArms]

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Mar/08/mn/mn03a.html

excerpt:

Not since World War II have so many National Guard units been pressed into service abroad. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 143,000 National Guard members have been mobilized worldwide, with the biggest single concentration expected this spring when more than 35,000 are slated to arrive in Iraq.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that units from New York, Louisiana, Idaho and Tennessee would be deployed to Iraq by late this year or early next.

The massive call-up is beginning to make governors, who rely on the National Guard to respond to disasters, exceedingly nervous. In Arkansas, for instance, more than half of the state's 8,200 National Guard troops have been mobilized. The state has had to call out the National Guard over the past six years for two giant tornadoes and a devastating ice storm, and Arkansas officials wonder whether they would be too short-handed to respond quickly to another crisis.

...more...

[pennylane100]

1. How ironic that Bush would use the National Guard

to fight his wars, it is the very organization he used to get out
of a war in Viet Nam.

[Claire Beth]

4. since it doesn't affect him or his family, it is okay (n/t)

[Bandit]

2. I'm sure recruitment must be through the roof

The death knoll of the National Guard.

[reprobate]

3. I look for the states to start calling for change in the NG rules.

I think there will be a move to separate the purpose of the guard from the reserves. The governors will start to demand that their states guards be strictly for the use of the states themselves, and not subject to nationalization.

This will be the beginning of the unravelling of the forces of empire. And it's about time. This is no longer a world in which a non-aggressor needs a huge standing army.