War Call-up Cuts Us Ability to Fight Disasters

America's state governors have complained to the Bush administration that the high number of national guard volunteers serving in Iraq has hobbled their ability to fight wildfires or other disasters, it was reported yesterday.

With 40,000 national guard troops in Iraq, many states are missing large numbers of firefighters, policemen and prison guards, leaving their public security services operating with skeleton staffs. The scale and ferocity of the Iraqi insurgency has delayed the soldiers' return.

Republican and Democratic governors voiced their anxiety at the largest deployment of the part-time force since the second world war.

In peacetime, national guard forces are under the control of state governors and can be used to handle civil unrest or natural disasters. Their absence has become acute as summer wildfires have taken a grip of western states. Oregon's Democratic governor, Ted Kulongoski, told the New York Times that the state's national guard firefighting force was at half strength because 400 of its members were overseas.

"We're praying a lot that a major fire does not break out," Mr Kulongoski said. "It has been dry out here, the snow pack's gone because of an extremely warm May and June and the fire season came earlier ... You're just going to have fires and if you do not have the personnel to put them out, they can grow very quickly into ultimately catastrophic fires."

Altogether Oregon has 700 national guard soldiers in Iraq and that number is expected to rise to 1,300 by the autumn. Meanwhile, in Idaho, over 60% of the national guard force, 2,000 troops, have been sent to Texas for training prior to deployment in Iraq.

"In the past we've been able to call on the national guard," Mark Snider, a spokesman for the Republican governor, Dirk Kempthorne, said. "We may not be able to call on these soldiers for fighting capabilities."

Elsewhere, officials in Arizona said they were facing a staffing crisis in state prisons caused by the absence of over 100 guards serving overseas. As the death toll in Iraq continues to rise and as tours of duty are extended, the national guard's recruitment fig ures have been hit. The army national guard is below strength by about 6,000.

Discontent in the ranks has also been stoked by reports that life insurance sales agents have been using compulsory financial planning sessions with raw recruits to sell them expensive policies.

An investigation by the New York Times found that many of the soldiers who signed policies had no idea what they had bought, believing that signing the documents was obligatory and that they were agreeing only to put aside savings. In fact, they had agreed to pay inflated monthly premiums for less coverage and benefits than the standard package offered by the army.

"They were given no time to read the documents and no copies to keep," the newspaper reported of one incident at Fort Benning in Georgia. Its investigation found that the practice of misleading sales pitches to captive audiences of green recruits was widespread, involving other bases and several financial services companies.

The Pentagon said it did not intend to end the practice of personal insurance selling, but said it was taking measures to protect recruits from "deceptive or predatory sales practices".