Just read this.....THE INTERNAL SECURITY FORCES OF IRAQ NEEDS TO HAVE THIS ASSIGNMENT NOT THE GUARD!!!!
You're taking a full Brigade and hacking it up into 26 components with no unit cohesion NOR training.......this is absurd!
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials.......xml&coll=7
This mission, to provide security for convoys carrying fuel, food, medical supplies and other items from base to base, means that the soldiers of the 41st Brigade are scheduled to spend a year scattered around a shooting gallery, with no ability to control events by participating in neighborhood meetings, training police or raiding houses -- all things that Oregon soldiers have done in previous deployments.
They will be, one officer said, "IED magnets."
As such, they are less likely to fire their weapons than to be fired at. And when they see one of their colleagues killed by an improvised explosive device, they will inevitably ask themselves if it was worth the life of a friend to escort a load of lettuce, diesel fuel and toilet paper from one military base to another.
and
"Using (the National Guard brigades) in ad hoc organizations structured specifically for the mission is seen by our soldiers as making them 'fillers' rather than trained, cohesive units," Kulongoski wrote. "It sends the signal to them that they are second-rate soldiers and units."
Col. Daniel Hokanson, who commands the 41st Brigade, is preparing as if the brigade will be given the mission that the Defense Department described to it this winter. But he hopes to find a way to at least hold the brigade together in a single chain of command, rather than breaking it into 26 separate security companies that are attached to active-army units.
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