Once Prohibited, Guard Units Now Returning to Iraq

Senior Editor Anna Mulrine reports:

The Army's announcement Monday that four Army National Guard brigades--totaling more than 12,000 troops--are headed to Iraq marks the first time that any full brigade combat team has returned to the country for a second tour.

National Guard soldiers currently account for 11 percent of the roughly 145,000 troops now serving in Iraq. (Reservists comprise about 6 percent of the total troops.) Though the return of the brigades will mark a significant increase in National Guard presence now in the country, it is not a high-water mark for Guard units in Iraq. That came in 2004, when Guard troops made up some 40 percent of the 120,000 soldiers and Marines then in-country.

The return of the brigades came as no surprise to military analysts, who had been anticipating a greater Guard call-up as the ranks of the active-duty Army and Marine Corps have been increasingly stretched by multitple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The move began to look even more likely in January, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the Pentagon was overturning a previous policy in place that Guard soldiers and reservists would not to be sent overseas for more than 24 months consecutively. This had meant that after six months of training and a yearlong tour, National Guard brigades were not likely to return to the war again.

"As the war dragged on, we were starting to run out of people in the Guard and Reserve using that policy," says Christine Wormuth, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The policy change in January was the Pentagon saying that it had to find a way to essentially reset the clocks of everyone in the National Guard who's gone to Iraq before." The Pentagon also promised bonuses for National Guard soldiers and reservists who were sent over for a second tour.

The return of Guard units to Iraq is a politically sensitive issue, since states--and their governors--rely on the corps of citizen-soldiers to provide emergency help in the event of natural disasters or threats to homeland security. To that end, National Guard Bureau Chief H. Steven Blum has promised not to deploy more than 50 percent of a state's national guardsmen at any given time.

The equipment of the Guard units, though, remains a source of considerable concern.

"Very few units have sufficient equipment to be combat ready," says Wormuth. "We viewed the Guard as a strategic reserve." Not only did many Guard units begin the war with less equipment than active-duty troops, she adds, but the shortage has been exacerbated as units leave equipment behind in Iraq for others to use.

"Now they don't have equipment to train on." The question that remains, Wormuth says, is "whether they have the equipment they need to respond to a natural disaster."

Retired Brig. Gen. Stephen Koper, head of the National Guard Association, says that though "the equipment piece is certainly critical, the Army will find a way" to ensure troops get the training and equipment they need. But, he adds, it will be a challenge. Some 80 percent of Guard units were found to have significant equipment shortages, according to one military assessment.

"It's been kind of like the dirty linen, and we shoved it under the bed hoping no one would ring our doorbell," he says. "But they have."

Etc.: Bush to Discuss War Funding (Video), on USNews.com

Update: Gates Announces 15-Month Iraq Tours (Video), on USNews.com