Nevada Guard unit to head to Iraq again

The Nevada Army National Guard’s 72nd Military Police Company will be heading to Iraq again, Guard officials said Wednesday.

The unit, which includes about 100 soldiers based in Henderson and 20 from an Ely-area detachment will leave in mid-November for several weeks of training at Fort Dix, N.J., before deploying to an undisclosed location in Iraq, according to a statement from Nevada National Guard spokeswoman April Conway.

The 72nd MPs were some of the first citizen-soldiers called up for the Homeland Security detail, Operation Noble Eagle, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They spent nearly a year providing security at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif.

Then in May 2003, they served in Operation Iraqi Freedom on a tour that included enemy detainment operations at the Abu Ghraib prison before the arrival of the Army Reserve’s Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company, which was involved in the much-publicized torture and prisoner abuse scandal.

Conway said Nevada’s 72nd MPs have since undergone a transformation that focuses on combat-support military police operations instead of enemy prisoner-of-war operations.

News of the 72nd Military Police Company’s deployment came late Wednesday as Pentagon officials said they were preparing to alert eight National Guard units that they should be ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan beginning late next summer.

The U.S. military is reaching out to more Guard units in an effort to maintain needed troop levels, ease some of the strain on the active duty Army and provide security for ports, convoys and other installations.

According to defense officials, seven of the units would deploy to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because the orders had not yet been signed and the announcement is not expected until the end of this week.

Two of the units will be full combat brigades heading to Iraq, between next summer and into 2009, to serve as part of the rotation with active duty troops. Those two Guard brigades would include about 3,500 soldiers each. But the other five going to Iraq will be much smaller brigades that are tailored for specialized support operations, mostly security and detainee operations. Their sizes vary, but some would be about 1,000 troops.

The announcement expected sometime this week will give the Guard units advance notice of the planned deployment schedule so that they can begin training and preparing.

Conway said Nevada military officials had not been told yet whether any Nevada Guard troops would be alerted for next summer’s deployments. She said the Nevada National Guard has about 125 soldiers and airmen serving on overseas deployments in support of the global war on terrorism.

There are now 171,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, largely because several units are overlapping as some move in and others move out of the country. Once those transitions are complete and the drawdown begins, the level of troops in Iraq could drop to as low as 135,000.

Some of the smaller Guard units would be stationed in Kuwait, where they would provide security for the port there, as well as convoys that move in and out of Iraq.

As of this summer, more than 185,000 Guard members had served in either Iraq or Afghanistan over the past six years and more than 28,000 of them had been deployed more than once.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.