LAT: Guard Troops Allege Troubling Treatment (Lockdown, Bad Training)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard25nov25,0,6896648,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Members of a National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they are under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.

Even more troubling, a number of the Guard troops said, is that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year. "We are going to pay for this in blood," one Guard member said.

They said they believe their treatment and training reflects an institutional bias against National Guard troops by commanders in the active-duty Army, an allegation that Army commanders denied.

The 680 members of the 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment were activated in August, and are preparing for deployment at Dona Ana, a former World War II prisoner-of-war camp 25 miles from its large parent base, Fort Bliss, Texas.

Irony is one of the Sergeants complaining has a son named Reagan named after Ronald Reagan.

...that means they are supposed to be guarding THIS NATION, NOT being used as "fluffers" in Bush's War on the World. DAMN this pisses me off. If I could find a Bush supporter in my neighborhood, I'd go piss in their gas tank. They endorsed this crap. Support the troops my ass.

the first time I've heard of them being locked down. I wonder if this is standard operating procedure now.

Move on, nothing to see here...

they know they are cannon fodder.
Conscription, even worse than the draft and when they are wounded, discharged and no healthcare.
:mad:

town in Texas, the invariably and unreasoningly jingoistic newspapers have your standard flag-waving articles about all these guys being called up to "fight for freedom" and how proud we are of them...

Because otherwise, I suppose the reasoning goes, we would immediately be enslaved by hordes of marauding Iraqis. I don't know how they'd get here, but I'm in the middle of nowhere so this whole 'fear and terror' shtick has never worked on me.

That phrase pops up in every story in every town written by hack writers who have never met each other. It is bizarre. I wish I could ask each writer his or her definition of "freedom" and whose "freedom" it was at stake.

So this article struck me as ironic. If they are in "lockdown," I guess the hackneyed phrase I've been seeing over and over may be more appropriate than I first thought.

The soldiers also said they were risking courts-martial or other punishment by speaking publicly about their situation. But Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, 45, one of the soldiers who allowed his identity to be revealed, said he feared that if nothing changed, men in his platoon would be killed in Iraq.

Dominguez is a father of two — including a 13-month-old son named Reagan, after the former president — and an employee of a mortgage bank in Alta Loma, Calif. A senior squad leader of his platoon, Dominguez said he had been in the National Guard for 20 years.

"Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of training," he said. "So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our rope."

The madness of King George continues to inflict death and destruction on everyone.

:nuke:

From a spokesman in Washington thousands of miles away.

There is no difference," said Lt. Col. Chris Rodney, an Army spokesman in Washington. "We are, more than ever, one Army. Some have to come from a little farther back — they have a little less training. But the goal is to get everybody the same."

Case closed.

Don't rock the boat, we're in a war. Support our troops. (sarcasm)