Iraq hurt Katrina response, general says

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq.

"Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Blum.

Blum said that to replace those units' command and control equipment, he dispatched personnel from Guard division headquarters from Kansas and Minnesota shortly after the storm struck.

Blum also said that in a worst-case scenario up to 50,000 additional Guardsmen per month will be needed in Louisiana or Mississippi over the next four months to continue providing relief, law enforcement and other post-hurricane services.

Those 200,000 troops, if needed, would represent nearly two-thirds of the approximately 319,000 Guard troops available nationwide.

Blum said his staff has almost completed a plan for 30-day rotations of Guard units so that no one will have to serve in the Gulf Coast for more than a month.

There are about 30,000 Guardsmen in Iraq and a smaller number in Afghanistan, Kosovo and elsewhere overseas.

Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, whose waterfront home in Bay St. Louis was washed away in the storm, told reporters the absence of the deployed Mississippi Guard units made it harder for local officials to coordinate their initial response.

"What you lost was a lot of local knowledge," Taylor said, as well as equipment that could have been used in recovery operations.

"The best equipment went with them, for obvious reasons," especially communications equipment, he added.

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/katrina.natguard.ap/index.html