Received via e-mail from Sandra Miller, a writer based in Phoenix whose articles have appeared here in the forum and at Federal Observer. She's the one who asked a question of McCain at a meeting in Phoenix and claimed she'd put on her tombstone "She made John McCain mad." :P See http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-23507-miller.html

DETAILS OF THE PENTAGON'S
"TROOPS ON THE BORDER" DEPLOYMENT
("Ammunition" for your phone calls to Senators)

An aide in Congressman Norwood's (GA) office shared the basic details of the GWB plan for deploying NG troops on the border. As we would expect, the plan maximizes cost, minimizes benefit, shuffles lots of people in and out to give the image of mass mobiliation while achieving absolutely nothing. And best of all for GWB and the "open borders" members of Congress it's designed to fail, allowing them to claim, "See we told you that putting troops on the border would cost too much and wouldn't work."

Here it is: 6,000 troops will be deployed for 5 weeks at a time--the first 2 weeks for training and transportation, the following 3 weeks in actual duty, but in "support" roles so as not to offend the Mexican government with US military uniforms on the border. Then at the end of the 5 weeks, the original 6,000 will be deactivated and another 6,000 will be brought in. So the 6,000 will be replaced every 3 weeks! That way, no one becomes very proficient at the job, reducing the possibility that "troops on the border" might actually be effective.

The aide gave me the dollar figures, but I didn't write them down. The beginning figure was $753 million, and this "turnstile" plan ran the cost to over $4 billion. Just to make politicians look good! If my math is correct, the Pentagon will deploy nearly 104,000 different NG people in one year just to maintain 6,000 "bodies" there.

For any who doubted that GWB was sincere last Monday night, you were right! A leopard doesn't change its spots!

In calls to your Senators, let them know you're on to the phony "troops on the border" scam perpetrated by the White House.

Several of us plan to visit Kyl & McCain's Phoenix offices tomorrow, and you can be sure their aides will be informed that the details of this worthless deployment are now known. Should they claim it will be effective, our reply will be "If it's so great, how come it's not being used in Iraq?"