HELP MAY BE ON WAY FOR JOBLESS GUARDSMEN

The Florida National Guard has asked the National Guard Bureau and U.S.
Department of Defense to find jobs for former employees of a disbanded
South Florida drug interdiction program, including several soldiers who
received their pink slips while on active duty in Iraq.

Unable to find work, at least two of 39 Florida Guardsmen who became
unemployed when Operation Guardian lost funding have volunteered to return
to war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan. Others say they are considering a
similar move.

Glenn Sutphin, legislative liaison for the Florida National Guard, said
Tuesday that the Guard has supplied the Washington-based National Guard
Bureau with information on all 39 Operation Guardian employees laid off in
September. Of those 39, at least eight remain unemployed, Sutphin said.

After the Defense Department announced its intentions in 2003 to scrap
Operation Guardian, Sutphin said Maj. Gen. Douglas Burnett, commander of
the Florida National Guard, "went back to the National Guard Bureau and DOD
and said, 'This is not correct.'"

"But when they made a final decision, all we could do was salute," Sutphin
said.

The Florida Guard did offer job training to some in Operation Guardian,
Sutphin said. "We did everything we could to find jobs for them," he said.

Begun in 1989, Operation Guardian was a $40 million program that assigned
full-time National Guard members to work with U.S. Customs agents searching
for drugs at airports and seaports. Florida's share of the annual budget
totaled $3.4 million.

Asked to gauge the chances that the federal government would find money to
reinstate Operation Guardian in South Florida, Sutphin replied, "Fifty-fifty."

The Florida National Guard's appeal to Washington comes less than a week
after a South Florida Sun-Sentinel report on the plight of several
Operation Guardian veterans, and a subsequent demand from U.S. Rep. Alcee
Hastings, D-Miramar, that the jobs be restored. Hastings termed "downright
shameful" the Defense Department's decision.

"How did the Department of Defense and the National Guard expect these
soldiers to care for their families when they returned home?" Hastings asked.

Former Operation Guardian Sgt. Roberto Orozco, 43, who has been unemployed
since September, said he would gladly return to the program if it were
reinstated. He was in Tikrit, Iraq, when he learned that the job he held
for 14 years was gone.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act is designed
to protect anyone from job loss when called to active military duty. The
act does not apply in this case, however, since Operation Guardian was
eliminated .