skippy the bush kangaroo: why not just get dick cheney with a shot gun?

Thursday, May 18, 2006

why not just get dick cheney with a shot gun?

tom burka at opinions you should have tells us the overtaxed national guard to use illegal immigrants to guard mexican border:

the national guard, hard-pressed to keep up with its many duties at iraq and at home, has decided to guard the u.s.-mexico border with illegal immigrants it enlists as they come across the border. "we see it as a very special guest worker program," explained guard commander sergeant leon rocknard.

rocknard conceived the plan when he learned that president bush wanted the guard not to perform any law enforcement operations while "guarding" the border.

"once i learned that we'd be mostly cooking and cleaning, the idea came naturally," he said. he added that another upside of the program was that the workers could be paid "almost nothing." he further justified his decision by insisting that guarding the border was "one of those jobs americans want done but don't want to do themselves."

the democratic veteran takes a bit more jaundiced view of the whole thing:

so, they are going to take guard troops from the border states affected, and ostensibly train them to do the job of the border patrol. i have my doubts that the training will be more than a "gun decking" of training records and include a chit for mileage to the border.

these men and women will be facing issues that i wonder how well they wil be prepared for. the last time we saw woefully-unprepared guard troops put in position of authority over detainees and too-little supervision we got abu ghraib. not to say that would happen again, but it seems that the 1600 crew is setting up the situation again, all to get a photo-op and a hopeful poll-bounce.

i wonder how this will affect the guard in the long-term, i wonder how this policy will do more than provide an opportunity for the deserting frat-boy to put on a uniform and prance around the rio grande on his way to another vacation on his "ranch". i wonder how the commander of the guard will reconcile his conscience knowing that he might have helped to undermine the organization he loves and has dedicated his life to, by not speaking up if that's the right thing to do now.

that assumes he has a conscience.

posted by skippy at 9:43 PM |