Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained
> =============================================
>
> Troops from California describe a prison-like,
> demoralized camp in New Mexico that's short on gear and
> setting them up for high casualties.
>
> By Scott Gold /Times Staff Writer
> Los Angeles Times
> November 25, 2004
>
> DOŅA ANA RANGE, N.M. - Members of a California Army
> National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to
> Iraq said this week that they were under strict
> lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than
> soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp
> where they are training.
>
> More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that
> the training they have received is so poor and
> equipment shortages so prevalent that they fear their
> casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive
> in Iraq early next year. "We are going to pay for this
> in blood," one soldier said.
>
> They said they believed their treatment and training
> reflected an institutional bias against National Guard
> troops by commanders in the active-duty Army, an
> allegation that Army commanders denied.
>
> The 680 soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the 184th
> Infantry Regiment were activated in August and are
> preparing for deployment at Doņa Ana, a former World
> War II prisoner-of-war camp 20 miles west of its large
> parent base, Ft. Bliss, Texas.
>
> Members of the battalion, headquartered in Modesto,
> said in two dozen interviews that they were allowed no
> visitors or travel passes, had scant contact with their
> families and that morale was terrible.
>
> "I feel like an inmate with a weapon," said Cpl.
> Jajuane Smith, 31, a six-year Guard veteran from Fresno
> who works for an armored transport company when not on
> active duty.
>
> Several soldiers have fled Doņa Ana by vaulting over
> rolls of barbed wire that surround the small camp, the
> soldiers interviewed said. Others, they said, are
> contemplating going AWOL, at least temporarily, to
> reunite with their families for Thanksgiving.
>
> Army commanders said the concerns were an inevitable
> result of the decision to shore up the strained
> military by turning "citizen soldiers" into fully
> integrated, front-line combat troops. About 40% of the
> troops in Iraq are either reservists or National Guard
> troops.
>
> Lt. Col. Michael Hubbard of Ft. Bliss said the military
> must confine the soldiers largely to Doņa Ana to ensure
> that their training is complete before they are sent to
> Iraq.
>
> "A lot of these individuals are used to doing this two
> days a month and then going home," Hubbard said. "Now
> the job is 24/7. And they experience culture shock."
>
> But many of the soldiers interviewed said the problems
> they cited went much deeper than culture shock.
>
> And military analysts agree that tensions between
> active-duty Army soldiers and National Guard troops
> have been exacerbated as the war in Iraq has required
> dangerous and long-term deployments of both.
>
> The concerns of the Guard troops at Doņa Ana represent
> the latest in a series of incidents involving
> allegations that a two-tier system has shortchanged
> reservist and National Guard units compared with their
> active-duty counterparts.
>
> In September, a National Guard battalion undergoing
> accelerated training at Ft. Dix, N.J., was confined to
> barracks for two weeks after 13 soldiers reportedly
> went AWOL to see family before shipping out for Iraq.
>
> Last month, an Army National Guard platoon at Camp
> Shelby, Miss., refused its orders after voicing
> concerns about training conditions and poor leadership.
>
> In the most highly publicized incident, in October,
> more than two dozen Army reservists in Iraq refused to
> drive a fuel convoy to a town north of Baghdad after
> arguing that the trucks they had been given were not
> armored for combat duty.
>
> At Doņa Ana, soldiers have questioned their commanders
> about conditions at the camp, occasionally breaking the
> protocol of formation drills to do so. They said they
> had been told repeatedly that they could not be trusted
> because they were not active-duty soldiers - though
> many of them are former active-duty soldiers.
>
> "I'm a cop. I've got a career, a house, a family, a
> college degree," said one sergeant, who lives in
> Southern California and spoke, like most of the
> soldiers, on condition of anonymity.
>
> "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. And we're supposed
> to be ambassadors to another country? We're supposed to
> go to war like this?"
>
> Pentagon and Army commanders rejected the allegation
> that National Guard or reserve troops were prepared for
> war differently than their active-duty counterparts.
>
> "There is no difference," said Lt. Col. Chris Rodney,
> an Army spokesman in Washington. "We are, more than
> ever, one Army. Some have to come from a little farther
> back - they have a little less training. But the goal
> is to get everybody the same."
>
> The Guard troops at Doņa Ana were scheduled to train
> for six months before beginning a yearlong deployment.
> They recently learned, however, that the Army planned
> to send them overseas a month early - in January, most
> likely - as it speeds up troop movement to compensate
> for a shortage of full-time, active-duty troops.
>
> Hubbard, the officer at Ft. Bliss, also said conditions
> at Doņa Ana were designed to mirror the harsh and often
> thankless assignments the soldiers would take on in
> Iraq. That was an initiative launched by Brig. Gen.
> Joseph Chavez, commander of the 29th Separate Infantry
> Brigade, which includes the 184th Regiment.
>
> The program has resulted in everything from an alcohol
> ban to armed guards at the entrance to Doņa Ana,
> Hubbard said.
>
> "We are preparing you and training you for what you're
> going to encounter over there," Hubbard said. "And they
> just have to get used to it."
>
> Military analysts, however, questioned whether the
> soldiers' concerns could be attributed entirely to the
> military's attempt to mirror conditions in Iraq. For
> example, the soldiers say that an ammunition shortage
> has meant that they have often conducted operations
> firing blanks.
>
> "The Bush administration had over a year of planning
> before going to war in Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a
> George Washington University law professor who has
> acted as a defense lawyer in military courts. "An
> ammunition shortage is not an exercise in tough love."
>
> Turley said that in every military since Alexander the
> Great's, there have been "gripes from grunts" but that
> "the complaints raised by these National Guardsmen
> raise some significant and troubling concerns."
>
> The Guard troops in New Mexico said they wanted more
> sophisticated training and better equipment. They said
> they had been told, for example, that the vehicles they
> would drive in Iraq would not be armored, a common
> complaint among their counterparts already serving
> overseas.
>
> They also said the bulk of their training had been
> basic, such as first aid and rifle work, and not
> "theater-specific" to Iraq. They are supposed to be
> able to use night-vision goggles, for instance, because
> many patrols in Iraq take place in darkness. But one
> group of 200 soldiers trained for just an hour with 30
> pairs of goggles, which they had to pass around
> quickly, soldiers said.
>
> The soldiers said they had received little or no
> training for operations that they expected to undertake
> in Iraq, from convoy protection to guarding against
> insurgents' roadside bombs. One said he has put
> together a diary of what he called "wasted days" of
> training. It lists 95 days, he said, during which the
> soldiers learned nothing that would prepare them for
> Iraq.
>
> Hubbard had said he would make two field commanders
> available on Tuesday to answer specific questions from
> the Los Angeles Times about the training, but that did
> not happen.
>
> The fact that the National Guardsmen have undergone
> largely basic training suggests that Army commanders do
> not trust their skills as soldiers, said David Segal,
> director of the Center for Research on Military
> Organization at the University of Maryland. That
> tension underscores a divide that has long existed
> between "citizen soldiers" and their active-duty
> counterparts, he said.
>
> "These soldiers should be getting theater-specific
> training," Segal said. "This should not be an area
> where they are getting on-the-job training. The
> military is just making a bad situation worse."
>
> The soldiers at Doņa Ana emphasized their support for
> the war in Iraq. "In fact, a lot of us would rather go
> now rather than stay here," said one, a specialist and
> six-year National Guard veteran who works as a security
> guard in his civilian life in Southern California.
>
> The soldiers also said they were risking courts-martial
> or other punishment by speaking publicly about their
> situation. But Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, 45, one of
> the soldiers who allowed his identity to be revealed,
> said he feared that if nothing changed, men in his
> platoon would be killed in Iraq.
>
> Dominguez is a father of two - including a 13-month-old
> son named Reagan, after the former president - and an
> employee of a mortgage bank in Alta Loma, Calif. A
> senior squad leader of his platoon, Dominguez said he
> had been in the National Guard for 20 years.
>
> "Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are
> going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of
> training," he said. "So I don't care. Let them court-
> martial me. I want the American public to know what is
> going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering
> to serve their country. And we are at the end of our
> rope."
>
>
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-
> guard25nov25,0,7278305.story?coll=la-home-headlines
>
Yahoo! Everyone's waving flags, now.
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