According to the Associated Press news service, the Bush Administration was about 2,000 troops shy of its goal to have 2,500 National Guardsmen on border duty by the end of June. National Guard Bureau officials told AP that there were at least 2,000 others within the Border States who were either in training or helping to plan the mission. AP reports that, so far, only 10 states had signed agreements with the Pentagon for their Guardsmen to deploy, some have been holding back because of floods and fires within their own states, while others wanted concrete assurances that the Pentagon would pay.
The U.S. sent Air Force F-16s over central Syria in a show of force following the Dec. 13 killing of two U.S. Army Soldiers and one American civilian interpreter by a gunman linked to the Islamic State group.
