Large Troop Deployment to Iraq

According to a story (http://ow.ly/jPVM) linked from http://twitter.com/TexasGuard, one Soldier tells a story of being proud to join such a historic event. Members of the Texas Guard will be sent to Iraq just in time for their 2010 elections. Such a large deployment of the National Guard has not taken place since WWII.

I found this a bit shocking considering the President’s promise to remove our troops from Iraq as quickly as possible.  Why then are we deploying the most troops since WWII?

[efoods]I decided to check regarding other National Guard units. A quick Google of ‘national guard historic deployment’ yielded countless results. It seems almost every state is or will be participating in sending a “Historic” amount of troops to Iraq. “The most since WWII”, several sources are quoted.

Here are just a few of the stories:

http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/content/marysville/stories/2009/08/07/0809madeploy_ln.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=104

http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/53032582.html

http://readme.readmedia.com/news/show/New-York-Army-National-Guard-Troops-Deploy-for-Urban-Warfare-Training/769564

and the list goes on and on.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

From the list, it appears that they have been staggering each states deployment slightly, but slowly moving them all to Iraq. Texas will begin deploying it’s Guard forces in August 2009.

I find myself wondering why in the world we are shipping out all of our Guardsmen to Iraq, at a time when Northcomm is annoucing deployment of an additional 20,000 soldiers here at home to help with domestic terror and civil insurrections. Shouldn’t the National Guard (if any of the branches) be responsible for this kind of thing; and then, only at the Governor’s beck and call.

Does any of this have to do with the recent battles the states governors have been having with the Federal government regarding control of the local Guard forces?  If the Governors are saying “No thank you.” and trying to keep control of their own states Guard, then why now are they being sent overseas? What could be so important.

This article was posted: Friday, August 14, 2009 at 9:21 am

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