NewsMax.com
Monday, Feb. 26, 2001

This has to be of major concern to the new Bush-Cheney administration, for one of its goals is to assign far-greater responsibility to the National Guard in responding to such terrorist attacks upon United States soil.

According to a report by the Associated Press:

The Pentagon's inspector general said the National Guard is so hopelessly unprepared that its gas masks at one point were assembled with incompatible parts and its mobile labs outfitted with air filters installed backward.

In 1998, the Defense Department created 10 teams to be ready for duty in 2000. Three years later, the National Guard under the Clinton-Gore administration so badly botched preparations that none of those 10 teams is now ready to function.

In 1999 and 2000, yet another 22 teams were authorized by Congress, but all of those are still in various stages of non-preparedness.

What the teams of 22 full-time members each are supposed to do in an attack by terrorists is assist local authorities by identifying what nuclear, chemical or biological agents were used.

Pentagon investigators concluded that the National Guard's equipment and training was so defective that team members are in danger of succumbing to the very weapons they are intended to identify.

As for those defective gas masks the National Guard was issued, one team commander said, "It probably would work. I'm just not willing to bet my life on it."

Charles L. Cragin, the acting assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, who oversees the National Guard, said that problem has been corrected.

"Everyone is working with great perseverance to resolve all the issues that the inspector general has identified," he said.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Domestic Terrorism
Clinton Scandals