I got an Email from Ken Mehlman

Who writes to me, from time to time, and calls me...BEN?

I have no idea why to be honest, I never signed up to receive his garbage.

Nevertheless, Mehlman managed to say that politics should be "out of this".

Wonder why?

Now, there will be a reckoning, but as stated below, many on the right and many in the major media (as well as the fringe) will imply that this is the fault of people because of poverty and even more implicitly because of skin color.

However, there are question of funding and priorities on preventative measures that were chosen by government officials. To a certain extent the "crapshoot" nature of preventative measures is somewhat understandable, but nonetheless when that gamble fails, it is also logical and understandable that those who failed citizens through their gambles be held to account.

But there is also the measure of how the suffering can be alleviated. This is where the National Guard plays its best known, and most traditional role in our country, and there is a giant elephant in the room that cannot be emphasized enough as thousands of survivors suffer in hot, humid, dirty, and toxic New Orleans:

More than 6,000 Guard members were mobilized in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida when the storm struck on Monday, with the number rising to 8,000 yesterday and hundreds more expected to be called to active duty, National Guard officials said yesterday.

"Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people," said Lt. Andy Thaggard, a spokesman for the Mississippi National Guard, which has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.

Mississippi has about 40 percent of its Guard force deployed or preparing to deploy and has called up all remaining Guard units for hurricane relief, Thaggard said. Those include the Army band based in Jackson, Miss. "They are mustering transportation to move them south," he said. Soldiers who have lost their homes are exempt, he said.

...

Capt. Richard Locke of the Guard's 1st Battalion 167th Infantry headed toward Mobile yesterday with a force of 400 soldiers cobbled together from four units because the rest of the battalion is in Iraq.

Carrying M-16 rifles and 9mm pistols, the soldiers are assigned to control traffic at unlighted intersections, and patrol in Humvees and on foot to prevent looting.

Recruiting and retention problems are worsening the strain on Guard forces in hurricane-ravaged states. Alabama's Army National Guard has a strength of 11,000 troops -- or 78 percent of the authorized number. "We're just losing too many out the back door," Arnold said.

People in this country are going to die because of national guard personnel being over in Iraq, supposedly to "fight them there instead of fighting them here". Thanks to Bush's Iraqi invasion, this disaster is going to cause more to die OVER HERE as well as OVER THERE as surely as a major terrorist hit!