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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

National Guard’s combat role easing

Robert Burns Associated Press

WASHINGTON – After a tough year in Iraq, citizen soldiers of the Army National Guard will play a much smaller combat role for the remainder of the war, the Army’s top two generals say.

For many Guardsmen, that will mean less frequent call-ups and fewer disruptions of their civilian lives, the officers said in interviews with the Associated Press.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said the Guard also will undergo a historic change in the way it is organized, shifting some units from combat to support tasks. The aim, he said, is to better prepare Guardsmen for both their federal role as a combat and support force and their domestic job of responding to emergencies.

President Bush’s 2007 budget, to be presented to Congress on Monday, will propose to pay for a National Guard of about 333,000 citizen soldiers – the current total – rather than the 350,000 authorized by Congress.

The president also has proposed paying for less than the full authorized total for the Army Reserve.

Critics of Bush’s proposals say they amount to an unwarranted and untimely shrinking of the Guard.

Schoomaker, speaking in his Pentagon office this week, acknowledged that the restructuring plan has touched a nerve in states where governors rely heavily on their Guard forces to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies.

But, he said, the plan ultimately will produce a stronger and more modern force.

“Anybody who doesn’t see that this is, in the main, a good news story doesn’t get it,” he said.

Gen. Richard Cody, the vice chief of staff, said in a separate interview that unusually heavy use of the Guard in Iraq last year bought time for the active Army to reorganize itself to make more combat units available for fighting, while also giving soldiers additional time at home between overseas tours.

The number of Army National Guard soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan peaked at 69,416 last September; most are in Iraq.

During the past year, the Guard had seven combat brigades in Iraq, plus the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division of the New York Army National Guard. That accounted for nearly 50 percent of all U.S. combat forces in Iraq.