National Guard to head to Iraq

The announcement is
expected this week.

COMBINED DISPATCHES

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is preparing to alert eight National Guard units that they should be ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan beginning late next summer, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.

The U.S. military is reaching out to more Guard units in an effort to maintain needed troop levels, ease some of the strain on the active duty Army and provide security for ports, convoys and other installations.

According to defense officials, seven of the units would deploy to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the orders had not yet been signed and the announcement is not expected until the end of this week.

Two of the units will be full combat brigades heading to Iraq — between next summer and into 2009, to serve as part of the rotation with active duty troops. There are currently 20 combat brigades in Iraq, but under plans mapped out by President Bush and his top commanders, that number will gradually drop to 15 next year, as the U.S. reduces its troop presence there.

Those two Guard brigades would include about 3,500 soldiers each — generally the size of a combat brigade. But the other five going to Iraq will be much smaller brigades that are tailored for specialized support operations, mostly security and detainee operations. Their sizes vary, but some would be about 1,000 troops.

The announcement sometime this week will give the Guard units advanced notice of the planned deployment schedule so that they can begin training and preparing. Also, because it looks far into the future, there is always the possibility that plans could change, based on conditions in Iraq.

There are now 171,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, largely because several units are overlapping as some move in and others move out of the country. Once those transitions are complete and the drawdown begins, the level of troops in Iraq could drop to as low as 135,000.

Some of the smaller Guard units would be stationed in Kuwait, where they would provide security for the port there, as well as convoys that move in and out of Iraq.

All together, the Guard announcement would involve about 20,000 soldiers.

Specific brigades were not identified, but they will include units from North Carolina, Oklahoma, Illinois and Hawaii, according to officials. Some of those being alerted this week have done tours in the war zone already, and others would be going for the first time.

In Washington, a State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Blackwater’s work escorting U.S. diplomats outside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad expires in May, one official said, and other officials told The Associated Press they expect the North Carolina company will not continue to work for the embassy after that.

It is likely that Blackwater does not compete to keep the job, one official said. Blackwater probably will not be fired outright or even “eased out,” the official added, but there is a mutual feeling that the Sept. 16 shooting deaths mean the company cannot continue in its current role.

Meanwhile, Seven Iraqi police officers were killed by a roadside bomb blast in a southern province, police announced Wednesday.

A senior official, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said the attackers were members of a criminal gang and suggested that they formerly had claimed ties to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al- Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia movement.