Iraq duty stretching National Guard

The Pentagon announced Monday that 13,000 Guard troops will probably deploy to Iraq, starting next year.

By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 10, 2007 edition

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WASHINGTON - For a National Guard wanting to help support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan yet fulfill its primary mission at home, new deployments may further test its ability to be everywhere at the same time.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Guard units totaling about 13,000 troops are being told they'll probably deploy to Iraq beginning next year. The announcement indicates that the administration is still leaning heavily on the Guard to sustain the mission in Iraq, and the expected deployments complicate the Guard's efforts to be ready for homeland missions. While Guard officials maintain their units are willing and able to help support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, critics are concerned that equipment shortages and the time needed for training and rest at home will strain the Guard's ability to respond to crises domestically.

"The president's new plan to follow up this ill-advised escalation by sending ill-prepared National Guard troops to Iraq is another misguided strategy neither our troops nor the American people can afford," Sen. Harry Reid (D) of Nevada said in a statement issued Friday.

The likely deployment of more Guard troops to Iraq adds another dimension to a picture of a Pentagon already scrambling to staff a war over which Americans are increasingly divided. Last week, Defense officials announced that two Army units with less than one year of "dwell time" at home would be required to leave for Iraq in the next few months.

Yet the Guard is dealing with its own specific issues. The National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon, led by Army Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, oversees each state's Guard unit and commits to state governors that at least half of the total force of 350,000 guardsmen are available at any time to respond to a national disaster. The Guard more than meets those requirements, says one Defense official.

However, it's contending with equipment shortages that are leaving 88 percent of units with less than half the equipment required to perform missions at home, according to a commission mandated by Congress to look at such issues.

In 2002, for example, four units had to provide their equipment to forces deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2005, 12 units had to do so, according to the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, citing National Guard Bureau data.

About 25,300 guardsmen are now serving in Iraq. The 13,000 guardsmen cited in the Pentagon's announcement Monday are stationed in four states: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Indiana.

Observers outside the Pentagon believe the Defense Department may need at least twice the 13,000 additional troops from the Guard to sustain the effort in Iraq.

Much of Senator Reid's concern is based on a March report by the commission, which made a series of recommendations about how the Guard and Reserve should be resourced and structured.

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