MILITARY -- WOES OF AN OVERSTRETCHED NAT'L GUARD

The Progress Report

MILITARY -- WOES OF AN OVERSTRETCHED NAT'L GUARD: Equipment and
manpower shortages are placing increasingly strenuous demands
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard25nov25,0,7278305.story?coll=la-home-headlines)
on the "citizen soldiers" in the National Guard and Reserves, now being
transformed into active duty, front-line combat troops. Members of the
California Army National Guard say they were "under strict lockdown and
being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders"
while training at a remote desert camp in New Mexico. Moreover, the Los
Angeles Times reports, the training they received was so poor and
equipment shortages so prevalent "that they fear their casualty rate will be
needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq." One sergeant remarked, "I
came back to the National Guard specifically to go to Baghdad, because I
believed in it, believed in the mission. But I have regretted every day
of it. This is demoralizing, demeaning, degrading." Meanwhile, local
papers across the country continue to document the "backdoor draft."
Recent call-ups (http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/11/28/13638/635)
include a 43-year-old single mom (http://ydr.com/story/war/50585/) who
was honorably discharged 12 years ago, a 48-year-old Alabama man with a
hip replacement and fused vertebrae, and one man "with a hospital
identification band still on his wrist. He'd just had knee surgery.
(http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04319/411224.stm) "