Raul Labrador, GOP Challenger: Troops Should Man Mexican Border In Between Deployments To War Zones

[unhappycamper]

Raul Labrador, GOP Challenger: Troops Should Man Mexican Border In Between Deployments To War Zones
Ryan Grim
[e-mail] | HuffPost Reporting
First Posted: 09-28-10 05:22 PM | Updated: 09-28-10 05:22 PM

Instead of having members of the National Guard "sit and wait for six months" when they're not deployed in a war zone, it might be a better idea to send them down to patrol the Mexican border on their downtime, Idaho Republican candidate Raul Labrador floated to a Republican audience earlier this year, according to an audio recording of the meeting provided to HuffPost.

The idea, Labrador said, came to him from a former member of the Guard. "I was talking recently to a former National Guard person, a retired National Guard -- Guardsman, and he said that maybe there's something that we can do, when the troops come back, you know, from deployment, maybe instead of having them just sit and wait for six months in a place, maybe they can go to the border and work with the National Guard. There are some ideas. We're going to have to look at new ways of doing this, because this would be a whole new area that the National Guard has not been involved in in the past." (Listen to the audio.)

Soldiers are all ready under heavy strain from repeated deployments to war zones, however, and sending them directly to man the border would only acerbate the pressure on the all-volunteer military.

Labrador is running against conservative freshman Democrat Walt Minnick. The comment was made at on January 26th at a local GOP meeting in Payette County, Idaho.

Phil Hardy, a spokesman for Labrador, said that Labrador has consistently said that any the military "must be consulted on issues such as these" and the comment he made generally jibes with his position that the border should be increasingly militarized.



unhappycamper comment: "it might be a better idea to send them down to patrol the Mexican border on their downtime"

When these folks come back from their tours in the sandbox, that 'down time' is used for decompression, healing and reintegration. What do you suggest we do? Load them up with anti-depressants and pain killers and shovel them out again?

BTW, in case you missed it:

http://www.nationalguard.com/life/what-is-the-guard

What is the Guard?

The National Guard is a military branch—America’s oldest—that serves both state and federal governments. The major difference between the Guard and other branches is that while Guard units are combat-trained and can be deployed overseas (depending on your unit and your job), Guard Soldiers are just as likely to serve in their home communities—just one weekend per month, and one two-week period each year.

[Scuba]

1. We'd better have somebody standing guard on....

...the Oregon beaches too, in case someone tries to swim in from North Korea. I'll volunteer for that duty at PFC pay.

[madrchsod]

2. or the tami`s who will try to get out of canada...

last night heyhey had a post about canada`s boat people problem