There goes the neighborhood: More National Guard units are being put on alert, including the 256th Infantry Brigade of Louisiana. A friend of mine is an officer in the 141st Artillery, which accompanies the Brigade, and he made it sound far more certain that they were going when he called yesterday. Sometime in May, was the closest he could come to a departure time, and said he's been told to be prepared for up to a year and a half deployment. I think that's probably unlikely, and probably includes the next 3 months of drilling and preparation. Either way, I hope Baghdad is ready for a huge headache. Not from the artillery, but from the highly vocal drunkenness that accompanies the 141st every time I've ever seen two or more of them together.

Should they, in fact, deploy, I've been promised plenty of "man in the sand" interviews and insights, which I'll post here.