WASHINGTON - Stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the National Guard is less prepared now than it's ever been to respond to a major terrorist attack, a natural disaster or another domestic crisis, a congressionally appointed panel has found.
Because of the wars, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves found, 88 percent of Army National Guard units and 45 percent of Air National Guard units that aren't deployed overseas have severe equipment shortages. That's reduced the Guard to its lowest readiness level ever and posed an unacceptable risk to Americans, said Arnold J. Punaro, the commission chairman and a retired Marine Corps major general.
In a report issued Thursday to Congress, the commission also faulted the Department of Homeland Security for failing to identify the domestic missions the National Guard should be expected to perform and criticized the Defense Department for not equipping the National Guard adequately for those missions.
Punaro said the Defense Department had told at least one governor, whom he didn't identify, that it could take as long as four years to replace equipment his state's National Guard units had left in Iraq.
"If major changes are not made, the Guard and Reserve, the capability to carry out their missions, will continue to deteriorate," Punaro told reporters. "And it will go down, down, down. They will be less and less ready, and we will be taking more and more risks."
This Bush administration has pretty much destroyed the National Guard with its constant deployment of Guard troops in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is not surprising how much this Bush administration has destroyed both our active military and Guard forces--from the horrendous care and conditions the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were exposed to at Walter Reed, to the manpower shortages, the extended tours, the recruitment problems, equipment problems, and even "Flat Daddies."
It is time to get out of Iraq and bring the troops home.
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