Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Where’s the National Guard When We Need Them?

by Sandy Sand

They’re not under Bush’s desk. They’re not behind his desk chair. They’re not behind the drapes. They’re in Iraq!

Metaphorically, we might say the National Guard units have been swept under the rug in the Oval Office, and rolled up for a magic carpet ride all the way to Baghdad where they’ve languished, died and been turned into desert dust.


While thousands of National Guardists, on average 130,000 at any given time, protecting us from an “enemy” that was never in Iraq until we invaded that country, they could have and should have been HERE doing their job of REALLY protecting us.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster of epic proportions, and it’s aftermath a super disaster of man-made proportions. Three years later and New Orleans is no more put back together than any city in Iraq that we’ve bombed the hell out of.

Now it’s Ike, and nobody likes this Ike. Soon, if not now, everyone will hate FEMA…again.

Where are the home protectors?


If they were over here and not over there, they could been helping in the rescue effort, and now they could be helping to distribute much needed food and water, and assisting the Army Corps of Engineers rebuilding our own feeble infrastructure.

No food, no water, no electricity. Baghdad on a grand scale and everyday the projections of when the lights will come on again gets farther and farther into the future.

Inexcusable!

Hundreds, thousands of displaced hurricane victims could be returning home except for one thing: No electricity.

If the Army Corps of Engineers can build a bridge over a river in hours, or roads and landing strips in a few days, they should be able to repair power lines in a matter of days -- not weeks -- especially if they were assisted by guard units.


Ten billion dollars a month -- off budget -- goes to Iraq. We need the money and the men over here, not over there.

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