MAMBO YA KATRINA UNAYAONA

Gazeti la washingpost limeandika hivi kuhusu Kimbunga cha Katrina:
WASHINGTON - President Bush's decision to put thousands of active-duty soldiers and Marines on Hurricane Katrina relief duty adds a new dimension to the enormous strain on the military from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Senior military officers said Saturday they have plenty of troops to handle their wide range of missions at home and abroad, and they discounted suggestions that the urgent deployment of soldiers and Marines to the Gulf Coast would interfere with the rotation of combat troops in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We can handle the overseas war-fight commitment and still defend our homeland and support the Department of Homeland Security simultaneously," Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told a Pentagon news conference.
"People say, 'Aren't you stretched too far, aren't you about ready to run out?' There are 200,000 citizen soldier National Guardsmen left with the right kind of skills around this nation" to help with hurricane relief, Blum said.
The active-duty military has about 1.2 million people in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, of which about 140,000 are in Iraq and nearly 20,000 in Afghanistan. That leaves hundreds of thousands not committed directly to fighting wars, but many of them perform a range of staff functions in the Pentagon and other government agencies and at military headquarters across the nation and around the world.
Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge, deputy commander of Northern Command, told reporters at the Pentagon on Saturday that the Katrina mission would have no negative effect on executing the missions in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"Absolutely not," Inge said.
The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, said that while he has been personally assured by Pentagon officials that the Gulf Coast rescue and recovery effort can be accomplished without disrupting plans for Iraq rotations, he remains worried about the future.
"This effort will clearly increase the overall burden on our military," Skelton said Friday. "The Defense Department's civilian leaders must look at the impact of this and future crises and the ongoing war on the military's future readiness and overall state."
Inge said the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, which already has several infantry battalions in Afghanistan and Iraq or preparing to go there, began dispatching about 2,500 soldiers, including infantry, and support troops, to Louisiana on Saturday. They included most of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
A spokeswoman for the 82nd Airborne, Maj. Amy Hannah, said later that at least 5,000 would be sent from her division. Another spokesman there, Spc. John French, said 5,000 would be sent over the next few days.
The 1st Cavalry Division, from Fort Hood, Texas, is sending about 2,700 soldiers to the Gulf Coast, and the Marines are sending about 2,000 from bases in California and North Carolina. The 4th Infantry Division, which is getting ready to begin a new deployment to Iraq, already has sent some helicopters to Louisiana.
The Air Force is flying missions to the Gulf daily, and the Navy has numerous ships off the Gulf Coast.
Blum said the National Guard was going to send 10,000 more troops than previously planned, bringing the total number of Guardsman involved in the relief effort to 40,000 within the next several days. He said there would be 33,000 in Louisiana and Mississippi by the end of Saturday.
In addition to deployments in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the National Guard is heavily committed to the conflict in Iraq. The Army National Guard has 39,800 soldiers in Iraq and the Air National Guard has about 900. That represents about 30 percent of all U.S. forces in Iraq. Thousands also are operating in Kuwait.
Blum said the only Guard unit he knows of that has been pulled off the list to rotate into Iraq is a small unit whose members live in Gulfport, Miss., which was heavily battered by Hurricane Katrina.
"Many of them, we can't find them," Blum said.
A Guard infantry unit that was training at Camp Shelby, Miss., when Katrina struck has been kept off disaster relief duty so that it can deploy to Iraq as scheduled, Blum said.