These shortcomings have not gone unnoticed by one Iowa congressman

In the wake of the House’s approval of the National Defense Authorization Act recently, Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, who serves on the House Armed Service Committee, met with Iowa National Guard officers at the Iowa City Readiness Center May 24 to assess the readiness levels of the Guard. Because of the continued presence in Iraq, National Guard units, on average, have only 63 percent of their required equipment.The bill authorizes nearly $2 billion for unfunded readiness initiatives and authorizes $800 million to provide the National Guard and Reserve with critically needed equipment. Additionally, it protects our troops in harm’s way by authorizing $2.6 billion for additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, $947 million for additional Up-Armored Humvees, and $783 million for the continued procurement and enhancement of personal body armor.

“Clearly, there is a shortfall and we are trying to remedy this situation. The idea is to get up to 75 percent of what the Guard needs over the course of the next two years,” Loebsack said. “Our National Guard is doing a fantastic job. We’ve seen a change in operations as far as the mission with the Guard is concerned, and they are really picking up the slack and doing great things overseas.”

Shifting the role of the Guard

Brig. Gens. Mark Zirkelbach of the Army National Guard and Doug Pierce of the Iowa Air National Guard cited the Guard’s shift of operation as the biggest challenge threatening readiness.

“The Guard has changed since the Global War on Terror began,” Zirkelbach (pictured left) said. “We’ve moved from what we called a strategic reserve, which would deploy only once, until the draft kicked in and help proved the adequate manpower needed to be fully operational.

“This is how we died it in WW II, Korea, and Vietnam,” Zirkelbach said. “Today, we have an all-volunteer force, which is an operational force, meaning, instead of relying on a draft, Guard members will serve multiple deployments to help replenish manpower.”

Echoing Zirkelbach’s assessment, Pierce (pictured right) said: “We are matching and doing the same mission at the same rate as the active-duty members. We have good equipment; it’s just that we are using it more often and wearing it out at a faster rate.

“The problem has come to the surface now because of our continued rotations,” Pierce said. “We’ve been going overseas since 1996, but recent deployments have put more of a strain on our equipment and personnel.”

Moreover, Pierce said, one of the biggest challenges the Guard faces is keeping pace with the operation’s tempo and subsequent wear-and-tear on the equipment. “We are using more equipment and using equipment more often, so it tends to wear out faster,” Pierce said. “We need recapitalization and new acquisition of the airplanes and equipment we already possess.”

Taking care of the troops

Another aspect facing the Guard’s readiness is the impact the current wars have had and will have on the troops, their families, their employers and recruitment of new members. “We also need to have more people in the Guard, too,” Loebsack said. “They’re doing a great job recruiting, but beyond that we need to be concerned with the troops’ physical and mental health as well.”

Regarding enlistment, Zirkelbach said: “We will enlist more people this month than will separate from the service. The Iowa Guard will grow this month.”

Sharing equipment

The recently passed appropriations won’t go into effect until next year, so in the meantime, the Guards will have to use alternative means to procure equipment for their deployment needs.

“The shortages in the Air Guard aren’t as prevalent as they are in the Army Guard,” Pierce said. “However, I do foresee future issues regarding our current F-16s in Des Moines. They are older models, and because we are using them more frequently, I can see them wearing out much sooner.

“One way to address concern is by sharing equipment and planes with other units in Madison, Wis., and Great Falls, Mont.,” Pierce said. “We’ve been doing this long enough, so we have a pretty good checklist of what equipment impacts the unit the least when sent over to help the troops in the theater.”

Moreover, Zirkelbach said that units that have been alerted for deployment are receiving equipment through procurement and that if the procurements aren’t sufficient enough, then states are cross-leveling equipment to these units. “For example, we are moving some of our weapon systems, night-vision equipment and some vehicles to help other states satisfy their equipment needs,” Zirkelbach said.

Vehicles parked in the motor pool of the 109th Medical Batallion in Iowa City await next deployment orders

Zirkelbach, however, is concerned that units don’t have the proper equipment to train with before deployment, nor do they have enough full-time support to keep day-to-day operations functioning effectively and efficiently. “In order to generate readiness, we really need the equipment now in order to prepare, train and support our troops for the mission they will be conducting,” Zirkelbach said. “Our full-time manning is currently less than what is required, thus creating additional work loads in providing readiness in Iowa and helping provide other states with what they need for deployment.”

Minding the home front

Given the number of weather-related disasters Iowa has faced in recent years, namely flooding and tornadoes, concerns have mounted as to whether the Guard will be prepared to adequately and efficiently handle these situations when they arise.

“We need vehicles for support and communication equipment to help speed up our response time,” Zirkelbach said. “We’ve had up to 50 percent of the Guard deployed over the last five years and we’ve managed to respond to every significant weather-related event. It has not been an issue during this time and we don’t perceive this will be a problem in the immediate future.”

Of course her now-famous reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy as a reason to soldier on in her doomed cause is hardly the opening soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Duke Of Gloucester – who announces his intentions to disappear family members so he can achieve the throne and become Richard III.

But it does make one think that Hillary, an American royal in the House of Clinton, has the coldhearted conspiratorial instincts to have been at home with Richard’s House of York or as a key figure in Shakespeare’s historical plays. We always knew this. She’s just provided more evidence for the prosecution up there in Sioux Falls.

Here is Hillary in South Dakota:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.

Here is Richard III in Shakespeare:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul

We can’t blame Clinton for having this assassination thought in the back of her mind, because for those of us who have covered presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, it has a terrifying presence in our own as well.

But to put a voice to it? To indirectly (but very clearly) say the Democratic Party needs a strong No. 2 in case the No. 1 is felled is just too South American.

The prospect of an assassination is not spoken about often, sort of the way one doesn’t talk about car accidents while driving. In our plastic world the wood on which to knock is so very often out of reach.

This horror of one so gifted perhaps being snatched from us like King and the Kennedys is too much to bear. The New York Times dutifully reported before South Carolina and Iowa that some African-American women were considering voting against Obama out of a mother-protector instinct. In a November story for Iowa Independent, I asked Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, about this Times article as well as the untimely passing of their mother and Obama’s father — and placed it at the bottom of the piece.

Soetoro-Ng said the early deaths of her mother and Obama’s father did not factor into his decision to enter the 2008 presidential race, that he doesn’t feel fated to die young like his parents – a possible motivation for hurrying with life goals or missions.

“The reason he chose to enter it now is because he just really didn’t see anyone out there in the arena who could do it better,” Soetoro-Ng said. “He just felt I think what a lot of people feel – that he’s the right man for these times and that he’s only one who’s going to make us heal.”

If elected, Obama would be the first African-American president. Some members of his own race have told The New York Times they will vote against Obama to protect him from what they believe would be racially based assassination attempts. The Times recently quoted African-American women in South Carolina making those observations.

“My thoughts are that he would never make a decision based on fear, and I’ve got to be brave, too,” Soetoro-Ng said. “I think that the focus has to be on the many people who have set aside their differences to embrace him.”

In Des Moines the other night, I watched as Obama’s security detail positioned itself atop various buildings in the East Village – just as it did on Feb. 10, 2007, when Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Ill.

It’s inspiring to see those massive American flags cascading down buildings in back of the stage. But our nation’s wicked, bloodstained history is also present at these events. Above this majestic flag on that historic announcement day was a law enforcement official with some binocular device, scoping the crowd for trouble.

To raise, even in a hint or a stretch the specter of assassination is disqualifying for Clinton — both for the presidency and vice presidency. Can you image the “vast right-wing conspiracy” — and other speculation — if, God forbid, something were to happen to Obama, allowing Hillary to ascend to either the nomination or presidency? It might create the biggest challenge ever to our democracy, as her legitimacy would no doubt be thrown into question — with many suspecting Richard III-like motives.

In the end, those unforgivable comments from Clinton may be a sign that the Iron Lady is exhausted — and like someone in the bar just before closing time, speaking without a governor motoring in her brain.

If she were clicking, getting from A to B to C, she would clearly see that a more appropriate morbid reference would be for Hillary herself. At the August Convention, Clinton’s week there could be filed under the heading of the 1995 Andy Garcia movie, “Things To Do in Denver When You’re Dead.”

Politically, dead, that is.

Leach replaced Denver lawyer Martha Tierney, who has been serving as interim chairwoman. Leach is currently the interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is on leave from Princeton University, where he is the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. Leach serves on the board of several public companies and three nonprofit organizations – the Century Foundation, the Kettering Foundation, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and formerly served as a trustee of Princeton University.

Former Army linguist Alexander Nicholson recently described how the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has impeded efforts to keep America safe. A shortage of Arabic linguists in the Department of Defense’s national security unit meant that two crucial phrases uttered on Sept. 10, 2001, didn’t get translated until Sept. 12 — the day after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Those phrases were “tomorrow is zero hour” and “the match begins tomorrow,” Nicholson told a crowd last week in Des Moines. “Any of the 60 of the Arab linguists the DOD was forced to fire because of the DADT law could’ve easily translated those phrases from Arabic into English and helped save American lives,” he said.

Nicholson, who was discharged after he was outed, joined the Human Rights Campaign’s, “A Legacy of Service” tour to speak out against the DADT policy. Joined by four other veterans at the campaign’s national kick-off at the Iowa Historical Building, Nicholson used his story to illustrate how DADT and the firing of gay linguists have made America more vulnerable.“Congress is forcing the military to fire some of its best and brightest assets and will continue to do so until the Military Readiness Enhancement Act is passed and signed into law,” said Nicholson. “No one wants to play politics with the lives of your children and our brothers, but the mandated firing of critical personnel puts our troops into danger and makes America less safe.”

Nicholson, a trained human intelligence collector, was discharged six months after 9/11, when, out of spite, a friend of his used the military chain of command to “out” him. He is not alone. Since DADT was implemented in 1993, more than 11,000 soldiers have been discharged from the military. Of these, 323 were linguists, 60 of whom specialized in Arabic. Today, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has nearly 1,000 personnel, but only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers.

Meanwhile, as the Army struggles to recruit new soldiers and meet the demands of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is firing two gay people every day. Instead of pushing Congress to pass the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1246 ), which would repeal DADT, the Army has taken other steps to meet these demands such as enlisting felons, extending the age limit to 42, and extending soldiers’ deployment tours from 12 months to 15 months. On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it was considering the idea of a maximum 120-day extension for roughly 15,000 troops currently serving in Iraq.

Not only does DADT hurt recruitment efforts, but Nicholson contends the policy undermines soldiers and the commanders on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, who, by law, cannot speak out against military policies. “The ban on gay men and women in the military is an insult to the commanders on the ground, because it tells them that Congress does not trust them to do their jobs and keep order and discipline in their units,” said Nicholson. “And it’s an insult to our troops, because it assumes that they are so prejudiced and unprofessional that their own order and discipline would fall apart if they knew a gay man or woman was serving beside them.” A 2006 study conducted by Zogby International and the Michael D. Palm Center revealed that 73 percent of U.S. troops are comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.

The military has traditionally led the fight when it comes to mandating policies that combat discrimination, but it has yet to fully open its gates to gay soldiers. “When I walked through the gates at my boot camp in Ft. Benning, Georgia, my drill instructor made it very clear,” said Nicholson. “If you have a problem working and serving beside women, leave it at the gate. If you have a problem working and serving beside African-Americans, leave it at the gate.’ And he could just as easily say, for the good of our country, if you have a problem working beside a gay man or woman, leave it at the gate.”

Related Story:

The “Lift the Ban” organization has released a short film, “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and Gay Arabic Linguists.” The film was produced by the “Brave New Foundation” and features Stephen Benjamin, a former Navy Arabic Linguist, who was discharged under the DADT policy. Also, be sure to read Benjamin’s op-ed piece, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate,” which was originally published in the “New York Times.”

Arabic translator fired from the Navy for being gay

Read Part 1: “Human Rights Campaign Launches ‘Legacy of Service’ Tour“

Read Part 2: “‘Legacy of Service’ Vets Speak Out Against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’“