Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] civil disorder postpones evacuation of N.O.

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 9/1/05, Jerry Gamblin <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> 
> Only 1/3 of the Louisiana National Guard are in Iraq and the rest have
> been deployed to help with the clean up along with 21,000 other
> National Guards men from around the country. If you hear the liberals
> tell it though there is no  Louisiana National Guard  because they are
> all in Iraq.

You won't hear that from me.  But what you WILL hear is that if you
think a Guard that's at 2/3 strength is just as good the full strength
one, you're deluded.  Also, at the height of the Vietnam War, we had
only like 27% of our armed forces deployed overseas, which is where we
are now, and the reason for *that* is because units lose effectiveness
when there is no time or manpower available to rotate them out again. 
Whether you like to hear it or not, we've been throwing Guard troops
into Iraq at a greater rate than the Army, for the sensible reasons
that we're not going to reduce readiness of those regular units any
further.

Anybody who doesn't think we're really stretching our forces thin
either hasn't been paying attention, or somehow believes that we can
magically work our forces harder these days than in the past.  Anybody
who thinks we live in some kind of surreal tradeoff-free world should
please *wake up*.  There are real manpower issues in the armed forces
these days.

That said, it looks like a large part of the current mess was
inadequate preparation and an uneven initial response.  Once that part
goes wrong, the number of troops you need on the ground is much higher
than it would have been.

(In the above paragraph, I'm talking about New Orleans, not Iraq,
although I guess it could be ambiguous.)

jking

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