Veterans for Common Sense

The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans.

The classified plans, developed here at Northern Command headquarters, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.

The possible scenarios range from “low end,” relatively modest crowd-control missions to “high-end,” full-scale disaster management after catastrophic attacks such as the release of a deadly biological agent or the explosion of a radiological device, several officers said.

Some of the worst-case scenarios involve three attacks at the same time, in keeping with a Pentagon directive earlier this year ordering Northcom, as the command is called, to plan for multiple simultaneous attacks.

The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.

But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.

“In my estimation, [in the event of] a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned — of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved — to take the lead,” said Adm. Timothy J. Keating, the head of Northcom, which coordinates military involvement in homeland security operations.

The plans present the Pentagon with a clearer idea of the kinds and numbers of troops and the training that may be required to build a more credible homeland defense force. They come at a time when senior Pentagon officials are engaged in an internal, year-long review of force levels and weapons systems, attempting to balance the heightened requirements of homeland defense against the heavy demands of overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Keating expressed confidence that existing military assets are sufficient to meet homeland security needs. Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe, Northcom’s chief operations officer, agreed, but he added that “stress points” in some military capabilities probably would result if troops were called on to deal with multiple homeland attacks.

Debate and Analysis

Several people on the staff here and at the Pentagon said in interviews that the debate and analysis within the U.S. government regarding the extent of the homeland threat and the resources necessary to guard against it remain far from resolved.

The command’s plans consist of two main documents. One, designated CONPLAN 2002 and consisting of more than 1,000 pages, is said to be a sort of umbrella document that draws together previously issued orders for homeland missions and covers air, sea and land operations. It addresses not only post-attack responses but also prevention and deterrence actions aimed at intercepting threats before they reach the United States.

The other, identified as CONPLAN 0500, deals specifically with managing the consequences of attacks represented by the 15 scenarios.

CONPLAN 2002 has passed a review by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and is due to go soon to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top aides for further study and approval, the officers said. CONPLAN 0500 is still undergoing final drafting here. (CONPLAN stands for “concept plan” and tends to be an abbreviated version of an OPLAN, or “operations plan,” which specifies forces and timelines for movement into a combat zone.)

The plans, like much else about Northcom, mark a new venture by a U.S. military establishment still trying to find its comfort level with the idea of a greater homeland defense role after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Military officers and civilian Pentagon policymakers say they recognize, on one hand, that the armed forces have much to offer not only in numbers of troops but also in experience managing crises and responding to emergencies. On the other hand, they worry that too much involvement in homeland missions would diminish the military’s ability to deal with threats abroad.

The Pentagon’s new homeland defense strategy, issued in June, emphasized in boldface type that “domestic security is primarily a civilian law enforcement function.” Still, it noted the possibility that ground troops might be sent into action on U.S. soil to counter security threats and deal with major emergencies.

“For the Pentagon to acknowledge that it would have to respond to catastrophic attack and needs a plan was a big step,” said James Carafano, who follows homeland security issues for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.

William M. Arkin, a defense specialist who has reported on Northcom’s war planning, said the evolution of the Pentagon’s thinking reflects the recognition of an obvious gap in civilian resources.

Since Northcom’s inception in October 2002, its headquarters staff has grown to about 640 members, making it larger than the Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America, but smaller than the regional commands for Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. A brief tour late last month of Northcom’s operations center at Peterson Air Force Base found officers monitoring not only aircraft and ship traffic around the United States but also the Discovery space shuttle mission, the National Scout Jamboree in Virginia, several border surveillance operations and a few forest firefighting efforts.

‘Dual-Use’ Approach

Pentagon authorities have rejected the idea of creating large standing units dedicated to homeland missions. Instead, they favor a “dual-use” approach, drawing on a common pool of troops trained both for homeland and overseas assignments.

Particular reliance is being placed on the National Guard, which is expanding a network of 22-member civil support teams to all states and forming about a dozen 120-member regional response units. Congress last year also gave the Guard expanded authority under Title 32 of the U.S. Code to perform such homeland missions as securing power plants and other critical facilities.

But the Northcom commander can quickly call on active-duty forces as well. On top of previous powers to send fighter jets into the air, Keating earlier this year gained the authority to dispatch Navy and Coast Guard ships to deal with suspected threats off U.S. coasts. He also has immediate access to four active-duty Army battalions based around the country, officers here said.

Nonetheless, when it comes to ground forces possibly taking a lead role in homeland operations, senior Northcom officers remain reluctant to discuss specifics. Keating said such situations, if they arise, probably would be temporary, with lead responsibility passing back to civilian authorities.

Military exercises code-named Vital Archer, which involve troops in lead roles, are shrouded in secrecy. By contrast, other homeland exercises featuring troops in supporting roles are widely publicized.

Legal Questions

Civil liberties groups have warned that the military’s expanded involvement in homeland defense could bump up against the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which restricts the use of troops in domestic law enforcement. But Pentagon authorities have told Congress they see no need to change the law.

According to military lawyers here, the dispatch of ground troops would most likely be justified on the basis of the president’s authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to serve as commander in chief and protect the nation. The Posse Comitatus Act exempts actions authorized by the Constitution.

“That would be the place we would start from” in making the legal case, said Col. John Gereski, a senior Northcom lawyer.

But Gereski also said he knew of no court test of this legal argument, and Keating left the door open to seeking an amendment of the Posse Comitatus Act.

One potentially tricky area, the admiral said, involves National Guard officers who are put in command of task forces that include active-duty as well as Guard units — an approach first used last year at the Group of Eight summit in Georgia. Guard troops, acting under state control, are exempt from Posse Comitatus prohibitions.

“It could be a challenge for the commander who’s a Guardsman, if we end up in a fairly complex, dynamic scenario,” Keating said. He cited a potential situation in which Guard units might begin rounding up people while regular forces could not.

The command’s sensitivity to legal issues, Gereski said, is reflected in the unusually large number of lawyers on staff here — 14 compared with 10 or fewer at other commands. One lawyer serves full time at the command’s Combined Intelligence and Fusion Center, which joins military analysts with law enforcement and counterintelligence specialists from such civilian agencies as the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service.

A senior supervisor at the facility said the staff there does no intelligence collection, only analysis.

He also said the military operates under long-standing rules intended to protect civilian liberties. The rules, for instance, block military access to intelligence information on political dissent or purely criminal activity.

Even so, the center’s lawyer is called on periodically to rule on the appropriateness of some kinds of information-sharing. Asked how frequently such cases arise, the supervisor recalled two in the previous 10 days, but he declined to provide specifics.

Iran resumed uranium conversion on Monday at its facility near Isfahan, a move EU officials have warned will probably see its nuclear case sent to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

“The uranium conversion facility in Isfahan has started its activities under IAEAsupervision,” Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told reporters at the plant.

Iran agreed to suspend all nuclear fuel work last November as part of a deal with the European Union while both sides explored a long-term arrangement for Iran’s nuclear program.

But Tehran has complained about the slow pace of the negotiations and on Saturday rejected an EU proposal offering it economic and political incentives to halt nuclear fuel work for good.

At the Isfahan plant two workers wearing white overalls, face masks and hard hats lifted a barrel full of uranium yellow cake, opened its lid and fed it into the processing line.

Other workers at the plant watched excitedly via closed circuit television screens.

A nuclear scientist at the site, who declined to be named, said: “I am excited, I didn’t believe it until the last moment thinking this may not happen, but now I am very happy.”

Earlier a Reuters journalist, among a small group of local and foreign reporters invited to visit the plant, said it was surrounded by dozens of anti-aircraft batteries, patrolled by heavy security and surrounded by barbed wire fences.

The plant is in a dry industrial area about 20 km (12.5 miles) southeast of Isfahan.

Iran denies U.S. accusations that its nuclear program is a front for bomb-making. It says it needs to develop nuclear power as an alternative energy source to meet booming electricity demand and preserve its oil and gas reserves for export.

It has offered to export the uranium hexafluoride produced at Isfahan to allay Western concerns that it could be enriched into bomb-grade material.

NEW NUCLEAR CHIEF

The former state broadcasting head Ali Larijani, a conservative with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will replace Hassan Rohani as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.

European diplomats had expressed concerns that pragmatic cleric Rohani, who has led Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the EU since 2003, may be replaced by a more hardline official when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office this month, signaling a hardening of Iran’s nuclear policy stance.

Britain, Germany and France have called an emergency meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors for Tuesday to warn Iran not to resume work at Isfahan.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy on Friday called on Iran to “listen to reason” and said if Iran resumed its nuclear activities, “the international community will surely bring the issue to the Security Council.”

Iran on Saturday rejected a package of economic and political incentives presented by the EU’s big three countries aimed at persuading Tehran to scrap nuclear fuel work for good.

Iranian officials said the EU proposal, which included offers of help to develop civilian nuclear energy and in becoming a major transit route for Central Asian oil, was unacceptable because it denied Iran the right to produce its own nuclear fuel for power reactors.

However, Iran has so far been careful to stress that it is not restarting work on the most sensitive element of the nuclear fuel cycle — uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make reactor fuel or atomic warheads.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday Tehran had nothing to fear from referral of its case to the Security Council.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran’s nuclear program for three years after an exiled Iranian opposition group revealed the existence of undisclosed facilities there.

While the IAEA has highlighted numerous failures by Iran to report potentially weapons-related activities, it has found no “smoking gun” that would confirm U.S. suspicions that it is secretly trying to make bombs.

The angry mother of a fallen U.S. soldier staged a protest near President Bush’s ranch Saturday, demanding an accounting from Bush of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.

Supported by more than 50 demonstrators who chanted, ”W. killed her son!” Cindy Sheehan told reporters: ”I want to ask the president, ‘Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?”’ Sheehan, 48, didn’t get to see Bush, but did talk about 45 minutes with national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin, who went out to hear her concerns.

Appreciative of their attention, yet undaunted, Sheehan said she planned to continue her roadside vigil, except for a few breaks, until she gets to talk to Bush. Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. He was an Army specialist, a Humvee mechanic.

”They (the advisers) said we are in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that the world’s a better place with Saddam gone and that we’re making the world a safer place with what we’re doing over there,” Sheehan said in a telephone interview after the meeting.

”They were very respectful. They were nice men. I told them Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that now people are dead for nothing. I told them I wouldn’t leave until I talked to George Bush.”

She said Hagin told her, ”I want to assure you that he (Bush) really does care.”

”And I said if he does care, why doesn’t he come out and talk to me.”

Sheehan arrived in Crawford aboard a bus painted red, white and blue and emblazoned with the words, ”Impeachment Tour.” Sheehan, from Vacaville, Calif., had been attending a Veterans for Peace convention in Dallas.

The bus, trailed by about 20 cars of protesters and reporters, drove at about 15 mph toward Bush’s ranch. After several miles, they parked the vehicles and began to march, in stifling heat, farther down the narrow country road.

Flanked by miles of pasture, Sheehan spoke with reporters while clutching two photographs, one of her son in uniform, and the other, a baby picture, when he was seven months old.

She said she decided to come to Crawford a few days ago after Bush said that fallen U.S. troops had died for a noble cause and that the mission must be completed

”I want to ask the president, ‘Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. ”Last week, you said my son died for a noble cause’ and I want to ask him what that noble cause is?”

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said response that Bush also wants the troops to return home safely.

”Many of the hundreds of families the president has met with know their loved one died for a noble cause and that the best way to honor their sacrifice is to complete the mission,” Duffy said.

”It is a message the president has heard time and again from those he has met with and comforted. Like all Americans, he wants the troops home as soon as possible.”

The group marched about a half-mile before local law enforcement officials stopped them at a bend in the road, still four to five miles from the ranch’s entrance. Capt. Kenneth Vanek of the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office said the group was stopped because some marchers ignored instructions to walk in the ditch beside the road, not on the road.

”If they won’t cooperate, we won’t,” Vanek said.

The Pain Deep Inside

Bob Herbert, New York Times, August 8, 2005

Specialist Craig Peter Olander Jr. has the look of a mischievous kid, except that his eyes sometimes telegraph that they’ve seen too much. And there’s a weariness that tends to slip into his voice that seems unusual for someone just 21 years old. Killing can do that to a person.

Specialist Olander was a teenager from Waynesburg, Ohio, population 1,000, when he joined the Army in 2003. “It was very appealing,” he said. “The benefits. College. And it was something I’d always wanted to do since I was a small boy – be in the Army.”

He had mixed feelings about going to Iraq, but he wasn’t particularly upset. He didn’t dwell on the possibility of getting killed or wounded. And he gave no thought at all to the spiritual or psychological toll that combat can take. “I was very confident in my training and I was very religious,” he said. “I’d always read Bible stories as a child and I believed the Lord would look over me and his will would be done.”

He went to Iraq in early 2004 and quickly learned that nothing – not his military training, not the Bible, nothing – had adequately prepared him for the experience. By the time he returned several months later, he said, the trauma he had encountered in Iraq had reached deep inside him. There was both fear and the hint of a plea in his voice as he told me, with surprising candor, that he believed the things he’d had to do in Iraq might jeopardize the salvation of his soul.

“Our base was Camp Victory in Baghdad,” he said. “We did raids, convoys, security, patrols – numerous, numerous things.”

The first time he was wounded was in the spring. He suffered a severe concussion and a sprained back when insurgents attacked his convoy with an antitank weapon. The headaches that ensued were all but unbearable. He was wounded again the following August.

“I was driving the Humvee that day,” he said. “The usual driver wasn’t sure of the area, so we switched. He was a new fellow and he was up on the gun.”

When insurgents attacked the unit with rocket-propelled grenades, Specialist Olander tried to maneuver the Humvee to safety. As he was turning, an explosion sent the vehicle into a roll.

“I stayed conscious,” he said. “As soon as the vehicle stopped rolling, I hopped out and I heard my sergeant hollering on the radio that we were hit. So I knew he was O.K. So I immediately went to the gunner, who was pinned under the Humvee. He was still alive at that point but he lost consciousness very quickly because the weight had stopped him from being able to breathe.

“We jacked the vehicle up. And right around that time, I’d say, once we got the vehicle off of him, unfortunately, he passed away.”

Specialist Olander said he reached for a machine gun as the insurgents continued to fire with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. “We engaged numerous individuals and killed them,” he said.

When I asked if he knew how many insurgents he personally had killed, he said, “Three, for sure.”

Specialist Olander sustained a number of injuries, including another concussion. “And my face was messed up pretty good,” he said. But his major problems then and now, as he readily acknowledges, “are emotional and psychological.”

He is filled with guilt. Several of his friends have been killed, and he thinks he could have done something to save the gunner who died. “I felt it may have been my fault that it happened,” he said. “Maybe I could have handled the situation differently.”

He is also filled with turbulent emotions related to the insurgents that he killed. “I had no hesitation about pulling the trigger,” he said. “But the aftermath is what hurt. Before I joined the military, I valued life very much, so taking it was hard. It’s confusing trying to figure it out, you know, because sometimes I feel rage toward them.

“But then it becomes a very religious thing, because I wonder, you know, since I’ve taken these lives, if I’m going to be accepted into heaven. You know, have I done the right thing?”

Specialist Olander is being treated for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center here. He expects to head back to Waynesburg in a few weeks, where he’ll stay for a while in a trailer that sits in a campground “out in the middle of nowhere.”

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Where are the Iraq War Heroes?

Damien Cave, New York Times, August 7, 2005

One soldier fought off scores of elite Iraqi troops in a fierce defense of his outnumbered Army unit, saving dozens of American lives before he himself was killed. Another soldier helped lead a team that killed 27 insurgents who had ambushed her convoy. And then there was the marine who, after being shot, managed to tuck an enemy grenade under his stomach to save the men in his unit, dying in the process.

Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.

Many in the military are disheartened by the absence of an instantly recognizable war hero today, a deficiency with a complex cause: public opinion on the Iraq war is split, and drawing attention to it risks fueling opposition; the military is more reluctant than it was in the last century to promote the individual over the group; and the war itself is different, with fewer big battles and more and messier engagements involving smaller units of Americans. Then, too, there is a celebrity culture that seems skewed more to the victim than to the hero.

Collectively, say military historians, war correspondents and retired senior officers, the country seems to have concluded that war heroes pack a political punch that requires caution. They have become not just symbols of bravery but also reminders of the war’s thorniest questions. “No one wants to call the attention of the public to bloodletting and heroism and the horrifying character of combat,” said Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. “What situation can be imagined that would promote the war and not remind people of its ambivalence?”

Heroism in the past was easier to highlight. In World War I, men like Sgt. Alvin York, a sharpshooter from Tennessee who captured 132 German soldiers with only a few rifles and a handful of men, were lauded by the military and devoured by the public. A ticker-tape parade in Manhattan greeted the sergeant’s return.

During World War II, the military became even more sophisticated. Responding to the propaganda campaigns of Mussolini and Hitler, every branch of the military created a public relations office, said Paul Kennedy, a military historian at Yale. Heroes were even brought home specifically to rally support for the war.

Richard I. Bong, for example, an Army Air Corps pilot who came to be known as the Ace of Aces, was sent home in December 1944 after shooting down his 40th Japanese plane. He was dispatched immediately on a nationwide tour to help sell war bonds.

Audie Murphy, perhaps the best-known World War II hero, took part in similar tours. He went on to act in 44 Hollywood films, including his own autobiography, “To Hell and Back.” Dozens of other combat heroes played roles in the war’s promotion.

“Everyone was involved,” said Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The deliberate mobilization of the home front was considered a major priority by government in a way that it’s just not now.”

The change began, historians said, with the murky stalemate of the Korean War, which did not require as much mobilization or support as previous wars. Vietnam cemented the shift. While the swashbuckling Green Berets were lionized in the war’s early years, by 1968 the public became skeptical of military planners who perpetually predicted a victory that never came.

“What happened very quickly was a move away from the bravery of the kids fighting,” David Halberstam, the author and former war correspondent, said in an interview. The question that ran through everyone’s mind was, Can this war be won?

“We had absolute military superiority but they had absolute political supremacy,” Mr. Halberstam said. “That led to a stalemate – and that became the governing issue.”

The military responded by pulling inward, said Maj. Bruce Norton, a Vietnam veteran and the author of a book of military award recipients, “Encyclopedia of American Military Heroes.” He recalled the case of a marine who received the Navy Cross, the second-highest military honor, in the mail.

President Bush has taken the middle road. He presented the Medal of Honor to the family of Sergeant Smith in a White House ceremony on April 4. He praised Sergeant Peralta, a Mexican immigrant, in a radio address and at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast in June.

But these citations did not occur in prime time, nor have they been repeated. And Sergeant Smith’s Medal of Honor is the only one that has been awarded for action in Iraq.

Meanwhile, despite recruiting shortfalls, the Army’s television advertisements have not featured the stories of Sergeant Smith or Sergeant Hester, the first woman since World War II to receive a Silver Star.

“We have not done as much as we ought to be doing to remind people that we’re at war,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a military historian at Johns Hopkins University, whose son is an infantry officer about to ship to Iraq.

Perhaps, some experts said, the military knows that promotion will attract unwanted scrutiny. After the heroic tales of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Sgt. Pat Tillman were largely debunked – with Private Lynch shown to have never fired a shot during her capture and rescue in Iraq, and Sergeant Tillman killed accidentally by fellow Americans, not the enemy, in Afghanistan – the Pentagon may have grown cautious.

“The military wouldn’t be foolish enough to choose a soldier and promote them,” said Mark Bowden, the author of “Black Hawk Down,” “in part because of widespread ambivalence about the war.”

Or, as some suggest, perhaps the military, which has always been uncomfortable with elevating one soldier’s actions over the efforts of others, would rather favor the group than the individual. “Everyone is in it, fighting 110 percent, so unless there is an act of truly outstanding heroism, you don’t want to select just one,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Mead said that “the cult of celebrity has cheapened fame.” He added, “What’s a war hero to do? Go on ‘Oprah’?”

Many military experts also said the short shrift given to heroes cannot be separated from the specifics of the war. Fighting an insurgency does not lend itself to individual heroism, said Maj. Gen. John G. Meyer Jr., who retired in 2000 as the Army’s chief of public affairs. “It’s more like guerrilla warfare,” he said. “It’s not the Battle of the Bulge, where we have massive battles and we get a single hero out of it.”

So instead of highlighting heroes, the military and the White House favor a two-pronged approach: for those who are likely to support the war, there is occasional talk of heroic sacrifice; for the larger national audience, there are speeches about victory.

It is a rhetorical split that mirrors the larger national divide between the minority who serve in the military and those who do not, said Anthony Swofford, a former Marine and the author of “Jarhead.” And it leaves important stories untold and unappreciated. “There might be heroes,” Mr. Swofford said, “in some of those coffins.”

The Pentagon’s reliance on National Guard and Reserve troops to fight the war in Iraq has brought clusters of combat deaths to U.S. towns for the first time in more than 50 years.

The deaths of 19 Marine reservists from an Ohio unit in the past week highlight the risks to part-time military units, which earlier this year hit a peak of about 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of U.S. troop strength in Iraq.

Since the Civil War, when entire towns shared in the grief of combat losses, the active-duty military has shifted away from using locally based units. The heavy use of Guard and Reserve units in Iraq has undercut a tradition that kept most of these troops out of combat since World War II and Korea. The military also restricted the number of family members required to serve in combat following World War II after multiple siblings died in battle.

When a large number of casualties hits a community, it causes “a pocket of trauma,” says Jim Martin, a retired Army colonel who teaches military culture at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. “It’s aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, boyfriends and girlfriends. … It’s not just 20 families, it’s 200 families.”

In January, four Marine reservists from a combat engineer unit in Lynchburg, Va., were killed in an ambush near Baghdad. In May 2004, five men from a Navy Reserve unit in Jacksonville died in a mortar attack near Ramadi. Two days earlier, two other members of that unit were killed.

Such concentrations of casualties were once common, as during the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, when 19 men from a Bedford, Va., unit were killed.

Few Guard and Reserve troops were deployed during the Vietnam War. After that war, the Pentagon shifted large numbers of critical support jobs to the Guard and Reserves. That made it difficult to go to war without part-time units.

Guard and Reserve troops were mobilized broadly for the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which ended with relatively few casualties. One exception: a missile attack that killed 13 Pennsylvania reservists.