Mississippi Guard may go back to Iraq - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Mississippi Guard may go back to Iraq

BILOXI, Miss. — Still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and a previous stint in Iraq, the Mississippi Guard is among a flock of ill-equipped units. But ready or not, some of the state’s guardsmen have been told to align personal affairs and begin girding for possibly another trip to Iraq.

President Bush is betting on a surge of more troops to yield what the White House considers victory in Iraq, regardless of shriveling public support; a bevy of Guard units hardly ready to respond; and a survey earlier this year that showed U.S. troops were growing increasingly skeptical, too.

The report released earlier this month from the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves reckoned that deployments of Guard units to Iraq and Afghanistan has helped exaggerate equipment shortages and hampered recruiting, resulting in 88 percent of National Guard units being “not ready.”

“Every state, none of us has the equipment that we need, but we’re not crippled and some other states are,” said Lt. Col. Tim Powell, a spokesman for the Mississippi Guard. “Could we use more equipment? Well, sure. Who couldn’t?”

The 890th engineering battalion, headquartered in Gulfport, was in Fallujah in 2003 when the Iraqi town was at its bloodiest. As units began rotating back home a year later, they were required to leave their equipment in Iraq.

When Katrina slammed into the Coast in 2005, almost 4,000 of the state’s guardsmen were still in Iraq, along with most of the Guard’s equipment. The Mississippi Guard borrowed tools and manpower from units in other states to respond to the disaster.

“The 890th really rode to our rescue after the storm,” said U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor. “They went to Iraq with the first part of the invasion and they were ordered to leave every bit of equipment, which was not necessarily a bad decision, but what was bad was not replenishing it when they returned.”

Even with the equipment shortage, Powell said the Mississippi Guard is able to handle the hurricane crisis at home. Meantime, on Capitol Hill, Taylor is pushing the National Guard Empowerment Act, which seeks to remedy systemic problems and give the Guard a seat at the table of the Joint Chiefs.

Some political leaders — Democrats and a growing number of Republicans — have criticized the Pentagon for its relentless test of a theory that the war can be fought on the cheap. Taylor said military brass were likely urged to limit any talk of the sparse resources. Ironically, they were unable to speak freely about equipment needs among soldiers who defend American freedoms, which includes free speech.

With the potential of some of the 890th being deployed again soon as part of Bush’s plan to increase by 21,500 the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, there’s a growing concern for the condition of the equipment left there in 2003, most of which will have to be reused.

“A lot of that equipment has been used up to the point that it needs to be replaced, and that’s the harsh reality,” Taylor said. “I’m convinced the commanders at the very top were pressured into minimizing any talk of the cost of replacement to disguise the true cost of the war.”

If Guard units are “not ready” from an equipment and manpower standpoint, then what about morale?

An annual survey from the independent Military Times released earlier this year showed for the first time since the conflict began, a majority of troops disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war. The number of troops who believe the U.S. should have gone to war has dropped from 65 percent in 2003 to 41 percent today.

Just 35 percent of the military members polled approve of the way Bush has handled the war.

Most active-duty troops seem to know better than to publicly offer any personal assessments of the war without a shield of anonymity. Instead, they toe the company line with generic takes on the conflict and how the White House has handled it.

But talk to troops who have returned to their South Mississippi homes after months of plodding through the Iraqi countryside and the points of view are far less restrained.

Bobby Gavignie, 29, spent a year in the Babil province, south of Baghdad, as an Army infantry team leader with the Mississippi Guard, stalking insurgents who were setting IEDs.

While he was there, he said, there was little talk of whether the U.S. should be in Iraq, no late-night chats in the barracks among troops pondering what politicians were doing back home.

“I thought there was a general sense of support for the job we were doing, and all I wanted was to do it and come home,” Gavignie said. “I support the troops, obviously, and I’m not against the war; I just don’t agree with the way it’s being run.”

Casey Weems, 26, spent a year in Iraq manning checkpoints in search of insurgents as part of the Army’s 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. He has since returned to the Coast and is listed as non-active reserve until 2010.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t be over there, but no one wants to be there when you’re there,” he said.

Weems doubts the troop surge will do much to sway the war’s outcome, unless there’s a sudden change in Iraq’s ability to govern itself and in the White House’s ability to make sure that happens.

“If we keep fighting the war the way we have been, (a surge) probably won’t work,” he said. Opinions of the war vary among older military veterans. Some blame politicians, others support the troops but not the war, and even a few claim the media is the real “axis of evil.”

“That’s an ongoing mess over there,” said Doyle Coats, a marine in Vietnam and current commander of the Gulfport chapter of the Disabled American Veterans. “We support our veterans 100 percent, but we don’t necessarily support our politicians 100 percent.”

Gerard Schuster, an Air Force veteran and former state commander of the Disabled American Veterans, said the media is to blame for the dwindling support for the war.

“To me, their agenda is to destroy Bush at any cost, even if it means sacrificing our troops to do it,” he said. “All (the media) can focus on are the bad things. Even if things were going good there, the media would still portray the bad. It’s all political.”