Army, Guard On Brink Of War: NGAUS Fires First Salvo

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http://breakingdefense.com/2014/01/army-guard-on-brink-of-war-ngaus-fires-first-salvo/



Army, Guard On Brink Of War: NGAUS Fires First Salvo
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on January 15, 2014 at 8:27 AM

The war hasn’t started, yet. But unless the regular Army and the National Guard can resolve their differences behind closed doors before the president’s budget request is publicly submitted sometime in February — and prospects are dim — there will be open, brutal conflict on Capitol Hill on a scale not seen since the 1990s.

Just how brutal, the largest Guard advocacy group made clear on Monday morning. After months of restraint in its public statements, the National Guard Association of the United States called out Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno by name. NGAUS president Gus Hargett, a retired major general, said in a statement that Odierno had “disparaged” the Guard’s readiness for combat in remarks last week at the National Press Club that were “disrespectful and simply not true.”

“I’m surprised by this release,” one Hill staffer told me in a phone call Monday. “I’m surprised by the tone ….I don’t understand why they would make it personal against Odierno at this point.”

But this isn’t personal, it’s tactical. Yes, there is tremendous passion involved. Yes, there is much less hope and much more bitterness on both sides than when I wrote an Army-Guard budget war was “avoidable” back in June. But the NGAUS statement wasn’t simply an outburst of outrage over particular remarks by the Army Chief of Staff. Odierno’s precise words at the Press Club were a pretext, not a reason. In fact, he has been saying the same things and worse about Guard readiness for roughly a year.

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1. In the immortal words of Bill the Cat..