Louisiana National Guard troops watch Katrina from Iraq

[donsu]

http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1093


More than 3,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard’s 256th Brigade serving in Iraq can only watch from Baghdad as Hurricane Katrina bears down on their families and homes in New Orleans and the other south Louisiana communities from which they hail. The deployed soldiers and their equipment, which includes high water vehicles, Humvees and generators, will be sorely missed as Louisiana attempts to prepare for and recover from the historic Category Five storm.

The soldiers of the 256th are due home in October, assuming their tour isn’t extended to beef up US troop levels in Iraq for the October constitutional referendum and December general elections. Mississippi and Alabama, the other states under threat from Katrina’s second assault on the Gulf Coast, also have Guard contingents in Iraq, with 3,500 troops of Mississippi’s 155th Brigade Combat Team serving near Karbala and Najaf, while 140 Alabama Guard troops left last Sunday for training preparatory to joining some 2,000 Alabama troops already deployed overseas.

-snip-

President Bush has already created one Gulf wasteland. In a few days he’ll be offering condolences to the residents of another; one he didn’t create, only stripped of its guardians in service of something he can’t even define.
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those 3000 could have really been of help in the days to come.

[RevCheesehead]

1. WTF are "high-water vehicles" doing in Iraq??

:grr:

[AllyCat]

6. Read somewhere else they took them in case the Tigris and

Euphrates Rivers flooded. The same poster wondered if the State of Louisiana had paid for that equipment and if so, how would the state be reimbursed for missing it in time of obviously grave need.

[deutsey]

2. I was wondering how these folks are doing with news of Katrina

hitting their homes, families and friends.

:evilfrown:

[TrueAmerican]

5. Plenty of soldier have died in

the Lakes and Rivers of Iraq. Iraq is not completely desert. They have most of the water in that region.

[berni_mccoy]

3. Now there's a morale booster!

:sarcasm:

[Lorien]

4. Dupe:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4493016