Iraq deployments worry governors

[Bandit]

National Guard call-ups put strain on state responsibilities
SEATTLE <http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?key=SEATTLE>With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers deployed in Iraq, many of America's governors complained to senior Pentagon officials this week that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricane season and floods and policing the streets.
.At a four-day annual conference dominated by talk about the war's effects at home, the governors held a private meeting on Sunday with two top Pentagon officials and voiced their concerns about the effects, both on the troops' families and on the states' ability to deal with natural disasters and crime, amid the largest call-up of the National Guard since World War II. More than 150,000 National Guard troops are stationed in Iraq and Kuwait. The troops account for 40 percent of the total American forces serving in those countries, and these citizen soldiers, as the Guard troops are known, have received multiple extensions of their tours of duty since the United States went to war with Iraq 15 months ago.
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..He added, "You're just going to have fires and if you do not have the personnel to put them out they can grow very quickly into ultimately catastrophic fires.
.Idaho's governor, Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican and departing chairman of the National Governor's Association meeting in Seattle this week, said he was worried about how the deployment overseas of 2000 Idahoans, or 62 percent of his National Guard, would effect firefighting and other emergency operations.
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.In Virginia, the concern is hurricanes. In Missouri, it is floods. And in a small town in Arkansas, Bradford, both the police chief and the mayor are Nation Guard members now serving in Iraq, leaving their substitutes a bit overwhelmed. "Our mayor and our police chief, along with six others were activated, and they're over in Iraq," said the acting mayor, Greba Edens, 79, in a telephone interview. "We had a police officer that could step in as chief, and I've been treasurer for 20 years so that just put me in the mayor's spot whether I wanted or it not."
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."This has had a huge impact," Locke said during a news conference on Saturday. In his state, 62 percent of its 87,000 Army National Guard troops are on active duty, including the majority of the Guard's best-trained firefighters, at a time when wildfires are beginning to sweep through the state, according to state officials.
.But even during a meeting that featured plenty of partisan sniping, Republicans also sounded worried about whether the deployments would leave them vulnerable in emergencies.
.Roger Schnell, the deputy commissioner for the Alaskan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, said in a telephone interview that wildfires raging through central Alaska were especially worrisome, given that 15 percent of its National Guard was overseas.
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