BobVee: Can we talk here about those men and women of the emergency services for a minute? I will go on with the assumption it is permissible. We are going to need the national guard in this situation in the worst possible way, but I don't know if we will have them. The guard is already stretched very thin. I do not know the status of guard units from the affected and neighboring states--whether there are enough of them available to do the necessary job. This brings up the argument about the priority of the guard mission. Very recently, it was said by national guard leaders that the guard's priority is the "Federal mission" which is why we may not have sufficient guard personnel available now in this disaster. I do know that if we had a larger active duty military, we would have both guard units available at home to deal with disasters like this and troops necessary to carry out the military mission wherever our leadership feels it necessary.

In this situation, I heard the 2nd Fleet Commander say that they intended to send an assault ship task force to the affect coastal areas. An assault ship has extensive medical facilites including a 600 bed hospital ward and also it has numerous helocopters for relief work. Normally, I think the army would ultimately need to be deployed to the affected area as well, but do we now have troops available? I think it's a serious question whose answer I am waiting to see.

By the way--just for the record, I am retired after 26 years in the Navy Medical Corps so I know a bit about how dicey this mission is going to be.