[SGT T.]

AOO,
In my short time here, I have become something of a FOB hopper. Victory, Stryker, Liberty, BIAP, Falcon, Rustamiyah, Loyalty, and now Apache. They have all been my homes for at least a night or two. I can tell you that in all my travels, I have not seen one NG unit roll outside the wire. Now thats not to say they don't, but here in Baghdad, I haven't seen it. Most of the NG guys deployed here are REMF's, Finance, hospital guys, water pureificaton dudes and legal types. I have nothing against NG types, in fact I was KSARNG (Kasnas Army National Guard) myself for two years before I went active. It's easy to say that the guard has crappy equipment, but the equipment the NG gets is based on funding, which is based on the number of troops any one state has. So, if you are a 5 foot 3 inch, 250 pound E-4 in the national guard, who has never passed a physical fitness evaluation, are you going to get kicked out? Probably not, because every guy the Guard loses is another top of the line piece of equipment your state is not going to get. This is why you see so many out of shape guys in the NG. So, if your state NG guys are going to war with crappy equipment, then the blame lies in two places, your NG recruiters, and your STATE leadership. NG guys swear alliegence to the Gov of the state, not the President. BTW, the Pennsylvania NG has Strykers. The Alabama NG has PAC 3 Patroit missliles. And the Kansas National Guard was one of the first units in the entire Army to get the M109A6 Paladin field artillery piece.