Word: guarde
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...talking about it, Congress last year put $1.2 billion into the project, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) promptly started hiring posthole diggers. DHS aims to complete more than 650 miles (roughly 1,000 km) of barrier by the end of the year, built in sections by National Guard units and private contractors. That represents only about one-third of the U.S.-Mexico border; on the other hand, the fence clearly delineates, for the first time, a frontier that was previously just a four-strand cattle fence at best...
Tucson Sector: Wild, Wild West "Yuma has a lot of it controlled, thanks to the fence, but that has probably just funneled the action our way," said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Billy Dart, a chopper pilot in the Army/Air National Guard. His voice in the headset seemed far away through the muffled roar of rotors. In nine months of patrolling Tucson Sector as part of Operation Jump Start--which deployed National Guard troops to bolster border security--Dart has, by his rough estimate, helped stop "thousands of tons of marijuana, tons of methamphetamine" and countless human beings...
...even as he spoke, he was worried about the impending end of Operation Jump Start. The two-year National Guard initiative expires on schedule this month, after Congress and the President turned down a request from the governors of California, Arizona and New Mexico to extend the program indefinitely. Homeland Security officials are hopeful that an aggressive recruiting program to increase the number of border-patrol agents will make up for the loss of the National Guard. But new agents don't arrive with their own choppers or bulldozer drivers. And it's risky to hire too many agents...
...Bush officials open to negotiations with Iran. He has called for a larger budget for diplomacy - "which makes him far more popular than SecDefs usually are around here," a State Department official told me. He has clearly sided with the Army reformers against the Old Guard, and even called David Petraeus back to Washington to preside over a promotion board when it became clear that Petraeus-style officers - the bold and creative proponents of counterinsurgency strategy - were being blocked. (Petraeus apparently succeeded in getting several of his protégés promoted to general...
...grassy park and down a trail through the trees to a clearing where we could spot the fruits of our labor - the start of what I was told will be a mile-long trail of sandbags piled two-feet high atop a leaky levee. In the distance, National Guard troops piled the bags. Below us, only a few feet away, was our new enemy - the river...