Role of Guard brigade in Iraq plan is uncertain

In the wake of President Bush's call for 21,500 more troops in Iraq, only one brigade-sized National Guard unit is currently being considered for the president's plan -- a Minnesota-based outfit that's already there.

But that doesn't take North Carolina's largest National Guard unit, the 30th Brigade Combat Team, off the hook.

Although no alerts or mobilization orders have been issued, the 30th is scheduled for its annual training in early April at Camp Shelby, Miss., said Maj. Matt Handley, a N.C. National Guard spokesman. And changes announced last week to Guard and Reserve deployment policies may make it easier to send units on combat tours more frequently, even as they shorten the duration of active duty service from 18 months to one year.

Some soldiers in the 30th think Bush's planned troop increase means they'll soon return to Iraq for their second tour in two years. But Handley said this isn't certain.

"I'm not going to say it's inevitable, but if you're in uniform and in the Guard or whatever, the chances of you deploying are very high," he said. "We're a nation at war, and this is not going away any time soon."

On Thursday, the Defense Department announced long-anticipated policy changes for deploying National Guard and Reserve units. These include deploying whole units instead of piecemeal activations and a new program to compensate citizen-soldiers if they're deployed more than once every five years.

Randy Noller, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau in Washington, said the aim is to make deployments more predictable by giving Guard units a minimum of one year notice.