Yesterday on CNN, Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the National Guard unready to respond to disasters like the tornadoes that hit Kansas. It seems like sort of an obvious point to make, and it shouldn't even be controversial...but it was implicitly critical of the administration, and we know how they feel about that.
So today, the administration hit back. They tried the same line they used with Governor Blanco: "If you don't request it, you aren't going to get it", as Tony Snow put it.
This time Sebelius was ready with a devastating takedown:
But Sebelius said she asked the Pentagon in December to replenish lost resources. She also said she spoke about the issue at great length with Bush over a year ago, in January 2006, when they rode together from Topeka, Kansas, to a lecture in Manhattan.Governor Sebelius also sounded the warning earlier this year, well before her state suffered the consequences of Bush's bizarrely misplaced priorities. Blanco blew it, but nobody can argue that Sebelius is Blanco.
The thing is, there just isn't any argument at all with Sebelius' point. Everybody who isn't drinking the Kool-Aid knows it. This is what the people who wet their pants at the word 'terror' really don't get, will never get: the war in Iraq not only does nothing to combat terrorism; it doesn't just destabilize the Middle East, sending concentric ripples of violence and chaos throughout the region; it also makes it a whole lot harder to defend our homeland, whatever the threat happens to be. Today it's a tornado in Kansas; 18 months ago it was hurricane Katrina; tomorrow it could be a terrorist attack--the kind that makes the pants-wetters wake up in a cold sweat. Whatever it is, as Maha says, we won't be ready for it.
[More at Mahablog, which is all over this this story.]
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