National Guard troops tapped for duty on the border with Mexico will not chase down illegal immigrants but instead will play behind-the-scenes roles in support of border guards, officials said Monday.

Among the tasks they are likely to perform over the coming year: training federal Border Patrol guards, building barriers near the border, improving roadways, providing support for aerial and ground surveillance, analyzing and sharing intelligence, and providing communications systems and transportation, the officials said....

--AP

Officials suggested their mission would be to play a supporting role by providing intelligence, training, transportation, construction and other functions, while leaving the actual guarding of the 2,000-mile line separating the United States and Mexico to the Border Patrol. The National Guard would be a stopgap force until the federal government could hire civilian contractors to take over administrative and support functions from the Border Patrol....

--Washington Post

Building barriers? Improving roadways? Is anyone thinking what I'm thinking -- that, after Bush has had his fill of strutting around looking martial and manly against a backdrop of uniforms, this is going to become yet another corporate-welfare program for Halliburton and other folks who supply goods and services to the military?