"Governors Tell Of War's Impact on Local Needs: Staff Shortages At Home; Citizen Soldiers Abroad Aren't Available to Aid States in Crisis," by Sarah Kershaw, New York Times, 20 July, p. A1.

"Rebuilding Iraq, A Well At A Time: Tiny Projects Succeed and Win Thanks for U.S.," by James Glanz, NYT, 20 July, p. A1.

"Don't Dumb Down the Military," by Nathaniel Fick, NYT, 20 July, p. A23.

Here's the first few paras of the top story:

With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in Iraq, many of the nation's governors complained on Sunday to senior Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes and floods and policing the streets.

Concern among the governors about the war's impact at home has been rising for months, but it came into sharp focus this weekend as they gathered for their four-day annual conference here and began comparing the problems they faced from the National Guard's largest callup since World War II. On Sunday, the governors held a closed-door meeting with two top Pentagon officials and voiced their concerns about the impact both on the troops' families and on the states' ability to deal with disasters and crime.

So while the Sys Admin force digs wells throughout Iraq, winning hearts and minds as they improve the infrastructure, they are sorely missed by their erstwhile employers back home who need them to protect our far more complex infrastructure from the daily vagaries of nature.

Some "experts" and more than a few congressmen are calling for the resumption of the draft, but nobody who knows the military wants the return of that force, because both combat and nation-building have simply gotten so complex that we can't field anything less than a well-educated force.

So we're not getting out of restructuring this force into what I call the bifurcated Leviathan/Sys Admin force. We cannot draft our way out of this situation, nor can we continue to rob Peter (the reserve component) to pay Paul (the active duty force). Nothing less is needed than a rebalancing of the entire force and a re-rationalizing of it to account for the obvious bifurcation of roles and missions that this security environment demands out of the Pentagon.