September 29, 2003 - Battery G, 1st Battalion 202nd Air Defense Artillery has been mobilized for service in the War in Iraq. The Illinois National Guard unit consists of 150 soldiers and their equipment and is based in Streator and Marseilles, Illinois. The Illinois National Guard announced that the unit will be deployed in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The unit’s deployment is for 18 months. The air defense unit and is, according to Brigadier General Randal Thomas, Adjutant General of the Illinois Guard. “well trained, equipped and ready to answer the call to active duty."

If the 202nd is deployed to Afghanistan the Taliban’s Air Force is on its way to extinction. Bin Laden’s fighter bombers are in big trouble. If they go to Iraq it will send a message to Saddam that we are ready for his guerilla air attacks and he better watch out because the 202nd is, as General Thomas says, “well trained, equipped and ready” for them. That is, of course, nonsense. There will be no aircraft for the 202nd to target in either Iraq or Afghanistan. So why is the 202nd being mobilized?

One possible answer is that the United States Military is stretched so thin that this crack air defense unit will be seeing service as infantry, more targets to ride the roads in the shooting gallery between Baghdad and Tikrit. If that is to be their mission it speaks volumes about the quality of planning in the Rumsfeld Defense Department.

There is another and more militarily sound possibility. That is that the Rumsfeld Defense Department is preparing for action in another theatre, one in which the enemy does have an effective air force; one where the 202nd will be needed to provide the 30th Special Heavy Brigade to which it is attached with an air defense capability.

Iran and Syria each have an air arm. Planning for a new conflict with either would require the air defense capability that the 202nd supplies. The unit is deployed for 18 months and the first three months – October, November and December – will be devoted to intensive training to prepare the unit for combat. That would mean that following the usual practice they can expect a combat deployment in January 2004 – just in time for the Presidential campaign to begin in earnest.

But then we do know that the Bush Administration would never go to war with Iran for domestic political reasons, don’t we? No, they must have Weapons of Mass Destruction or a program or maybe even an uranium enrichment program. We do know they have oil.