[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 133 (Thursday, September 25, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11933-S11935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 UNITED STATES MILITARY ROTATION POLICY

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will address the rotation 
policy in Iraq of our U.S. military forces, and specifically the 
National Guard and the Reserves. I will also address the planning of 
that rotation policy.
  Over the weekend, I met with enumerable groups in Florida about their 
loved ones who are serving overseas. As members of the Senate Armed 
Services Committee, we addressed this issue with Deputy Secretary of 
Defense Wolfowitz and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers, 
in our committee meeting 2 weeks ago on the plan of rotation and the 
inequities that are coming out as a result of the lack of planning and 
how that is being implemented.
  Now, I am going to give some specific examples. I might say that this 
large stack contains all e-mails--and you know how small the type is on 
e-mails--from family members in my State about the inequity of the 
situation. These are e-mails that I have received directly from 
soldiers, primarily members of the Florida National Guard and the 
Reserves.
  As I tried to address what I perceive to be the inequity in this so-
called plan as being implemented, as I tried to address it in 
committee, as I have in private meetings with the brass, and now as I 
try to discuss these inequities with the Senate, I, first, will say 
that had the executive branch of Government listened to the bipartisan 
voices in the Senate Armed Services Committee--and in particular the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee where the chairman of that 
committee, Dick Lugar of Indiana, a Republican, and one of his ranking 
members, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican, and another of 
his high-ranking members, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a 
Republican, along with a chorus of voices on the committee, including 
mine--had they listened about the need for a plan after the military 
campaign in the postwar occupation of Iraq, then I don't think we would 
be going through the strains and stresses on this rotation policy. 
Combatant Commander General Abizaid, who is supplied with Army troops 
through the Army Chief of Staff, of which they are having to stretch 
out these deployments of the National Guard and Reserves in Iraq, had 
they listened--had the executive branch of Government listened that 
there had to be a plan in place, as we had for Germany and Japan--we 
had a plan being worked on for 3 years prior to the end of World War II 
for Germany and Japan--had the plan been in place, we would see that we 
should not have an American face as occupiers in a Muslim country. 
Instead, it should be the world community participating in trying to 
stabilize Iraq politically and economically.
  Had a plan been in place, the preparation would have been there to 
bring in the Iraqi civilians to run the Government so that there is an 
Iraqi face on the running of the Government. But that plan is not in 
place and we are seeing the results of the near chaos from time to time 
and, indeed, the sabotage that is occurring, the deaths that are 
occurring, and so forth.

  But that is an issue for another day. It is a table setter for what I 
want to talk about--the inequity of the rotation policy and the plan 
that is specifically being conducted in the rotation of the troops in 
Iraq.
  First, Florida's National Guard is one of the most professional in 
the Nation. It is well organized, it is well trained, and it is well 
led. They have proven their dedication to duty in this war, and they 
have committed to do whatever this Nation asks, and they have done it 
very well.
  A couple of days ago, General Schoomaker, the Chief of Staff of the 
Army, told me that the soldiers of the Florida National Guard are as 
good as they come. They are also tired and fatigued.
  I raised this rotation policy with the Deputy Secretary of Defense 
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in that committee meeting a couple 
weeks ago. I have discussed this rotation policy with the Army Chief of 
Staff. I will discuss this policy with the Secretary of Defense 
tomorrow.
  Florida National Guard soldiers were among the first Guard units 
alerted in December. They were brought into the armory the day after 
Christmas to start preparing all of their equipment, and they were 
mobilized right after New Year's Day. They were also among the first to 
enter the theater of operations, beginning in February and flowing 
quickly through March and early April.
  Florida's National Guard soldiers participated throughout the major 
combat phase of this operation and throughout the breadth and depth of 
the theater--a theater that we know had no safe rear area, in the 
traditional sense.
  Company C, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 124th Infantry of the 
Florida Guard--let me tell you what they did before the war. The war 
started on March 19. Charlie Company dug by hand through the berm that 
marks the Jordanian-Iraqi border, and then they attacked into Iraq in 
support of the 5th Special Forces Group. They were in Iraq before the 
war started on March 19. Since then, Charlie Company has been passed 
around the theater, from command to command, about 10 times, from the 
5th Special Forces Group, to Special Operations Headquarters, to the 
5th Corps Headquarters, to the 3rd Infantry Division, to the 2nd 
Armored Cavalry Regimen, and to the 1st Armored Division.
  Charlie Company is still there and they have suffered two 
fatalities--one gunned down at the University of Baghdad the night I 
was coming into Baghdad in early July, another in a vehicle accident, 
and a third wounded in the neck. Other companies of the three 
battalions of the 124th Infantry, of the Florida Guard, have been 
passed among the headquarters all over the theater no less than 40 
times since arriving in the area of operations.
  This is not a complaint. This is a statement of fact. Florida is 
justifiably proud of its contribution to the war on terror. Florida has 
the third highest number of Guard and Reserve soldiers mobilized and 
deployed globally in the war on terror, with 6,190 Florida Guard 
soldiers. Two States are a little higher, California and Texas, and it 
is only by a few hundred soldiers in each of those States.
  Florida has also deployed the second highest number of Guard soldiers 
to the Iraqi theater. Right now, in the Iraqi area of operations, there 
are 2,482. We are second highest to Alabama, and Alabama has 38 
soldiers more. These two States, Alabama and Florida, by far have the 
most soldiers deployed to the Iraqi theater.
  No State has provided more infantry from the Guard than Florida--
1,392 infantry soldiers, followed by Indiana's infantry at 1,286. These 
two States by far are contributing more to the Iraqi theater from Guard 
units than are infantry troops.
  Naturally, since they were deployed the day after Christmas, they are 
tired, and I believe they should be replaced by fresh troops as soon as 
possible.
  There is a new policy, and the new policy of the Defense Department 
is a ``12-month Boots on the Ground in Iraq'' rotation policy, and it 
may not be equitably implemented because Florida's Guard entered the 
theater in company-size elements spread out over a period of 2\1/2\ 
months. So it doesn't sound like it is equitable for this new policy of 
boots-on-the-ground for the clock to start ticking only when the last 
unit arrives in theater, what they call over at the Pentagon ``closed 
in command.''
  I understand that other National Guard units are already beginning 
the process of coming home, and I am happy for them, and I am happy 
they are coming back to their loved ones. But I cannot seem to get a 
clear answer from the Department of Defense

[[Page S11934]]

and the Army about who is coming home early and why.
  National Guard units that have spent the entire major combat phase 
outside of Iraq appear to be on the way home. I will give an example.
  I had several from the highest echelons of the Department of the Army 
tell me that another State's National Guard is rotating back--that 
State's Guard has, in fact, never been in Iraq. In fact, if that 
information is correct that the other State's Guard is returning in 
October, then they will have served there 11 months. I am happy for 
them, but I am questioning the equity of a case where because of a 
``closed in command'' policy, the last unit arriving in the theater 
starting the clock ticking for 12 months ``boots on the ground,'' that, 
in effect, is going to extend some of the Florida National Guard a year 
and a half since they were mobilized and when they went to that 
headquarters to start packing their gear on December 26.
  Then I was told last night by another general in the Pentagon that, 
no, that particular State was not going home until next January or 
February. The Department of Defense cannot get the information correct. 
I have been told three different things about those units. I have been 
told four different things about the Florida units. So I have had to 
dig it out for myself by talking to our own Guard members through e-
mail and talking with them directly by telephone.
  The rotation policy for our Guard and Reserve forces should be 
simple: Return them to their civilian lives as soon as is militarily 
practical. This requires detailed and timely planning which does not 
appear to have been adequate or to have been based on realistic 
assumptions for operations after the major combat phase. Of course, the 
major combat phase was brilliant. General Franks will go down in 
military history as one of the great military leaders of the United 
States.

  Now we are in the phase of the occupation, and our soldiers of the 
Florida National Guard are proud to soldier on in Iraq, Afghanistan, 
Kuwait, and Bosnia, as well as at home securing Air Force bases in 
Florida. But we are on the threshold of a serious problem for our Guard 
and Reserve servicemembers. Their sacrifices began the moment they were 
mobilized and left their civilian lives behind. They leave their 
families, they leave their employers, their livelihoods. Their 
families' well-being is at risk throughout the deployment regardless of 
their location or tactical conditions. Guard families in Florida and 
across the Nation have endured the separation, uncertainty, financial 
hardship, and fear that goes along with any deployment into harm's way, 
and that is what they signed up for. They are willing to accept it.
  When I talked with these family members, as I did in Orlando last 
Thursday, in Tampa on Friday, and in Miami on Monday, they were almost 
apologetic to me. They said: For me to say anything sounds like I don't 
want to be patriotic. I am most patriotic, they tell me, and we are so 
proud of our Guard who are serving. They are pointing out, if others 
are coming back in less than a year, why are our Florida Guard and 
Reserves going to be mobilized for up to a year and a half? That is an 
excellent question.
  Let me give some of these family stories. In central Florida in 
Daytona Beach at the Halifax Medical Center, Kaitlyn Rose Long was born 
on February 25. Her father was not there. He did not expect to be there 
because he is a soldier deployed since January. At the time of her 
birth, he was 7,600 miles away in Qatar.
  Kaitlyn's mother thought her husband was coming home soon, 
particularly because he had suffered a collapsed lung while working 
guard duty in Balad, an Iraqi city about 50 miles north of Baghdad. He 
was sent to a hospital in Germany where doctors initially told him he 
was going to have to go home. They changed their minds, and he is 
expected back in Balad next week. To family members that is 
heartbreaking, but they will accept that. What they will not accept is 
the inequity of treating some one way and others another way.

  The husband of another 25-year-old mother of three from Brandon is a 
specialist in Charlie Company of the 2nd Battalion. As I said earlier, 
they have shifted to over a half a dozen units during their deployment. 
In mid-May, the company was told, because they were fatigued from the 
fog of war, that they were heading home. Instead, they were sent to 
Baghdad.
  Another lady, Ada Dominquez, came from Miami all the way to the 
Orlando meeting to tell me of her concern about this inequity.
  Florida's military families are tough, they are dedicated, and they 
are loyal Americans, proud of their service. They are willing to 
continue to make sacrifices to keep this Nation strong and free. They 
are an inspiration to me. They are an inspiration to all of us. They 
know this is very tough and complex, and it is still a very dangerous 
mission.
  One soldier's mother from central Florida said to me: Just tell them 
when they are going to be coming home. Do not keep jerking them around, 
getting this information; it stops, then it starts, and then it stops. 
She said that is when the morale sinks to the lowest.
  Members of the Guard and the Reserve are also volunteers. As we so 
often say, we recruit individuals but we re-enlist families. The 
rotation challenges the Army struggles with now are going to be the 
result of too few troops for the missions we ask them to do. We need to 
look seriously at adding more troops to the Active Force.
  There have been a number of us who have been trying to urge the 
Secretary of Defense to open that issue, and thus far it has not been 
addressed. We must, as a Nation, figure out how we are going to deal 
with this challenge, or we are going to risk losing the numbers we need 
in the finest Guard and Reserve system in world history.
  If the demands on our military continue at their current pace and 
more than 12-month overseas deployments become routine--as some of the 
Florida troops are facing, up to a year and a half--then our National 
Guard and Reserve troops are not going to re-enlist when the time 
comes. Our military force of the Army, which is roughly a half million 
plus Active, 400,000 plus Reserves, and 300,000 plus Guard; we can see 
that the Guard and the Reserves are so integrally important to the 
military force structure. If we do not have what is perceived to be an 
equitable rotation policy, then when it comes time for them to re-up, 
many of them will not. That will be devastating from the standpoint of 
providing for the force structure this Nation is going to need as we 
face the multitude of places around the world where we will have to go 
and battle the terrorists. If those ranks are depleted, then we will 
not have them when we need them the most.
  I commend the Guard and the Reserves. They have been one of the 
finest military fighting outfits that has ever been produced to 
supplement the regular Active-Duty Army. We can talk about the Air 
Guard as well, performing services all over this country, including air 
defense. It is those Guard units, under the command of the general from 
Tyndall Air Force Base, that if we ever have another airliner hijacked, 
he has the command responsibility of ordering the shoot-down of that 
airliner that is taken over by terrorists. The Air Guard is performing 
that.
  The issue in front of us now is the equity of the Guard and the 
Reserves in the rotation policy. I hope General Schumacher, the 
Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Chairman and 
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will listen to these words and will 
enact a policy of rotation that will be perceived to be equitable for 
all the Guard units.
  Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. What is the status of the 
morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in a period of morning business.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Is the time equally divided?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Equally divided, 30 minutes controlled by the 
Democratic leader or his designee, and 30 minutes controlled by the 
Senator from Texas or her designee.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from Florida would ask, does that 
mean the entire first 30 minutes is set aside for this side of the 
aisle?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. How many minutes remain?

[[Page S11935]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 4\1/2\ minutes remaining controlled 
by the Democratic leader.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will make a couple of other 
comments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

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