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Obama Picks Up Where Nancy Left Off
Not to be outdone by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama joined in on the “Blame Bush for the tornado in Kansas” campaign.
While I could comment on the appropriateness of using an F-5 tornado that destroyed an entire town as a political tool, or Obama’s accidental exaggeration of the death toll, I would prefer instead to simply address the facts of this disaster. Specifically, the facts and misinformation that Barack and Nancy are trotting out in their Blame Bush games.
Governor Sebelius has stated that 40% of the National Guard’s troops are in Iraq, and that about 50% of their equipment is gone. Obama also tells us that the Kansas National Guard only has 40% of its equipment and that they’ve had to “slow down the recovery process.”
Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense, I have a few “inconvenient truths” for the Blame Bush crowd. In a May 7th article, Sgt. Sara Wood reports that “the Kansas National Guard has 88 percent of its forces available, 60 percent of its Army Guard dual-use equipment on hand, and more than 85 percent of its Air Guard equipment on hand.” She goes on to note that “under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact… Kansas has more than 400,000 Guardsmen available to it, he pointed out. However, Kansas has not yet requested assistance from other states.”
I’ll admit that my tornado expertise extends only as far as Twister, The Wizard of Oz, and Night of the Twisters. However, I would bet that 400,000 Guardsmen and 60 to 85% of their equipment would be sufficient to conduct the recovery efforts in Kansas. That is, unless you follow the Nagin-Blanco school of disaster management, which states “When a natural disaster strikes the area under your governance, there are two major priorities you should keep in mind as you respond. The first is to ensure that you are able to use the disaster to its greatest political potential. The second is to ensure that you are able to use the disaster to its greatest political potential.”