Tornado politics and the National Guard

The Gov. of Kansas should be ashamed of herself. In typical knee-jerk fashion, everything for a Democrat politician has to be about Iraq.

If this gets out in the general data stream, she may look back at this point as where she jumped the shark. She was looked at by JFKerry as a VP, and is often talked about as a possible VP in the future. This move though, should take her out.



This isn't new, she has been waiting for a chance to bring this up again. From JAN of this year.



She is too clever by half though, the facts (irritating things that they are) are getting in her way. The Senator:

Brownback said Tuesday that local officials and the Kansas National Guard commander all told him they have the resources needed to respond.

``That's what really got me, is her saying that,'' Brownback said in an interview.

``So I asked, privately and publicly, the adjutant general, do you have the equipment you need?'' he said. ``Because if you don't, we're going to hit Fort Riley and McConnell (Air Force Base) and other places to make sure we have all the equipment we need to respond to disasters. Everybody there said no, we have the equipment we needed.''

He added: ``I think what we need to do is to focus on what we need here now, and not draw a broader political question in. We've got a disaster, and we need to all pull together to get everything we need from the state and the federal for the local need.''

The Pentagon:

Pentagon officials are disputing claims that the Iraq war has spread National Guardsmen too thin to respond to a Kansas tornado after the governor and some Democratic lawmakers complained that the Guard are not equipped to help displaced residents.

Kansas has 88 percent of its state Guard forces available, and 83,000 Guardsmen from neighboring states are also on the ready should the state request their assistance, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday, citing National Guard Bureau statistics.

According to Whitman, the Kansas Guard have available 352 Humvees, 94 cargo trucks, 72 dump trucks, 62 five-ton trucks, 13 medium-haul trucks and trailers and 152 2 1/2-ton trucks, a surplus, he noted.

Even CNN is calling a flag.

SEBELIUS: Here in Kansas, about 50 percent of our trucks are gone. We need trucks. We're missing Humvees. We're missing all kinds of equipment that could help us respond to this kind of emergency.

MCINTYRE: But, as bad as it is, the Army insists the devastation in Kansas isn't overly straining the Guard's admittedly limited resources. There are still thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles available. In fact, of the state's more than 7,600 Guard troops, only around 10 percent are deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And Kansas has not asked for any reinforcements or extra equipment from neighboring states.

She is starting to backtrack - but sorry, once you wave the bloody shirt - you're done.

Her spokeswoman, Nicole Corcoran, said the governor didn't mean to imply that the state was ill-equipped to deal with this storm. Sebelius' comments about National Guard equipment were, instead, meant as a warning about the state's inability to handle additional disasters, such as another tornado or severe flooding, she said.

Stop digging.

---

And, again, we have a Democrat playing politics with the military - don't think some people don't notice.