Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 19. Juli 2004 / Time Line July 19, 2004
Version 3.007/19/2004
Europæisk imperialsme
Tyskland
nægter at betale erstatning for folkemordet i Namibia, 1904, skriver
Berlingske Tidende.
07/19/2004
Governors Tell of War's Impact on Local Needs
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/national/20guard.html?th
By Sarah Kershaw
With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in
Iraq, many of the nation's governors complained on Sunday to senior
Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages
in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes
and floods and policing the streets.
Concern among the governors about the war's impact at home has been
rising for months, but it came into sharp focus this weekend as
they gathered for their four-day annual conference here and began
comparing the problems they faced from the National Guard's largest
callup since World War II. On Sunday, the governors held a
closed-door meeting with two top Pentagon officials and voiced
their concerns about the impact both on the troops' families and on
the states' ability to deal with disasters and crime.
Much of the concern has focused on wildfires, which have started to
destroy vast sections of forests in several Western states. The
governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, said in an
interview after meetings here Monday that the troop deployment had
left his National Guard with half the usual number of firefighters
because about 400 of them were overseas while a hot, dry summer was
already producing significant fires in his state.
"We're praying a lot that a major fire does not break out," he
said. "It has been dry out here, the snow pack's gone because of an
extremely warm May and June and the fire season came earlier."
He added, "You're just going to have fires and if you do not have
the personnel to put them out, they can grow very quickly into
ultimately catastrophic fires.''
Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican of Idaho and departing chairman
of the National Governors Association, also said through a
spokesman that he was worried about the deployment of 2,000
members, or 62 percent of his National Guard, who are now training
in Texas for a mission in Iraq.
"In the past we've been able to call on the National Guard," said
Mark Snider, a spokesman for the governor. "We may not be able to
call on these soldiers for firefighting capabilities."
California fire and forestry officials said they were not using
National Guard troops to battle wildfires plaguing that state, but
they did say that they were using nine Blackhawk helicopters
borrowed from the Guard to fight the fires. Some of the helicopters
are bound for Iraq in September.
More than 150,000 National Guard and Reserve troops are on active
duty. Many of the Guard troops have received multiple extensions of
their tours of duty since the United States went to war with Iraq
last year.
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