Border Deployment Will Take Weeks

New York Times: No boots were seen tromping in the desert sand on Sunday. No commanders were heard barking out orders to their troops. The National Guard, which officials had announced would turn out en masse along the United States-Mexico border over the weekend for sentry duty, was nowhere to be found. It turns out it will take weeks longer to select, screen and train the 1,200 National Guard troops the Obama administration had said would be deployed on Aug. 1 along the border from California to Texas. Administration officials explained that the announced date was always a starting point, the beginning of the process of deployment and not the day camouflaged soldiers would begin amassing at the boundary line with their automatic weapons, high-powered binoculars and filled-up canteens. As a sign that things have gotten under way, Jack Harrison, a National Guard spokesman, said Sunday night that about 140 troops have begun working in recent weeks on the "command and control" of the mission.