Table Of ContentCol. David Hackworth, DefenseWatch Editor Ed Offley, Deputy Editor J. David Galland and Guest Columnist
Emory Upton analyze the readiness and manpower crisis afflicting the National Guard.
Table of Contents
By Ed Offley
The silence is deafening - and sickening.
When the submarine USS Greeneville accidentally rammed and sank a Japanese fishing vessel early last year,
there were immediate cries for investigation and accountability. When an F/A-18 accidentally killed several
American and allied servicemen during a practice bombing mission in Kuwait in March 2001, a formal
investigation immediately collected the facts and meted out appropriate disciplinary measures. When the carrier
USS John F. Kennedy failed a vital materiel readiness inspection last December, her commanding officer was
summarily relieved of command.
That isn't news: The Defense Department and military services insist on leadership accountability for the
personnel, weapons and equipment in every unit.
But the Army National Guard seems immune from the Pentagon's strict rules, and the American people ought to
demand why that is tolerated.
SPECIAL REPORT - The National Guard and Reserves in Crisis
Editor's Commentary: Official Silence on Alleged National Guard Abuses Is
Sickening
In the three months since the newspaper USA Today initially revealed multiple allegations of how Army National
Guard units in several states routinely faked their personnel reports to hide shortfalls in troop levels - which
should have meant disciplinary charges and negative approval ratings for local Guard commanders as well as the
threat of lower federal funding - the silence has been deafening.
The allegations of falsified personnel rosters, in which "ghost soldiers" are kept on the rolls years after they resign
or retire from Guard service, are too widespread to be dismissed as an isolated case of mismanagement.
According to interviews with Guardsmen throughout the country, the USA Today special report in December
found:
* A 200-man California Army National Guard infantry company listed 70 soldiers on its roster who did not attend
mandatory monthly drills, more than 33 percent of the total;
* Another California unit - an 800-man battalion in the 40th Infantry Division - reported full ranks but was actually
carrying about 160 "ghost soldiers," a full 20 percent of its total;
* A retired colonel in the Illinois National Guard said that state's units were suffering a 20 percent personnel
shortfall that was not reflected in the official personnel reports;
* In South Carolina, a 4,300-member Guard combat brigade delayed reporting the discharges of over 500
personnel to convey the impression that the unit was adequately manned;
* A former sergeant in a Wyoming National Guard headquarters company said 10 of 65 members carried on the
unit roster were phantom soldiers;
* The Texas Army National Guard was hiding a 7 percent shortfall in personnel by cloaking more than 1,300
resignations and retirements that should have been reported.
The National Guard is suffering more than an epidemic of Enron-like accounting of its personnel rosters. As Col.
David Hackworth points out in this week's edition of DefenseWatch, many Guard and reserve units are suffering
from poor combat readiness, lackluster leadership and are failing to meet minimum Army standards for physical
fitness and military training - a point eloquently noted by Deputy Editor J. David Galland in his commentary this
week. And the USA Today investigation found far too many examples of outright corruption and retaliation against
whistleblowers in the senior ranks of National Guard state headquarters.
Meanwhile, the National Guard's well-documented foot-dragging on force structure reforms - a vital element of the
long-awaited Pentagon transformation program - all but ensures that its relevance to fighting the wars o the 21st
century will decline in years ahead, as guest contributor Emory Upton notes in his commentary.
We're talking about a situation that is far more serious than the mere wasting of millions - or tens of millions - of
dollars in the Guard's $13 billion annual slice of the Pentagon budget. In case the Bush administration, Pentagon
and Congress haven't noticed it, that war against terrorism in which we are currently fighting is steadily
demanding National Guard soldiers for mobilization into the active Army, as well as dedicated security service
from civilian airports to the U.S. border with Canada and Mexico. Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday told a
Senate subcommittee at least 700 additional National Guardsmen will be sent to the U.S.-Canadian border to
help man border-crossing stations as part of the homeland security effort.
The venerable National Guard component, with 362,000 Army and 108,096 Air Force members in 50 states, the
District of Columbia and three U.S. territories, is an integral part of both the Army and Air Force "total force"
package organized nearly three decades ago. How can the Army and Air Force leadership tolerate the internal rot
and corruption that is slowly destroying the Guard?
The same question applies to the Bush administration, its Defense Department leadership and Congress. (To be
fair, the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee leadership has requested a review of the USA Today
report allegations by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld - a singular and isolated instance of praiseworthy
congressional oversight lost in the morass of indifference on Capitol Hill. A Pentagon spokesman says the
request is being "staffed.")
But to the rest of our elected and appointed leadership, the questions remain unanswered: Where is the outrage?
Where is the concern? Where are the subpoenas and hearings? Why are you tolerating a pattern of
mismanagement in the National Guard that is clearly approaching the level of criminality in an area that is critical
to genuine U.S. national security?
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at
