A Perfect Storm...Of Incompetence
by tristero
Tornado recovery:The governor said the state's response was limited by the shifting of emergency equipment, such as tents, trucks and semitrailers, to the war in Iraq.
Not having the National Guard equipment, which used to be positioned in various parts of the state, to bring in immediately is really going to handicap this effort to rebuild,' Sebelius said.
To state the obvious: That's the problem with incompetence. It compounds catastrophe.
[UPDATE: Some commenters read the above and thought that I was accusing the Kansas state government, or the victims themselves of incompetence. Not so. The incompetents here are the Bush administration who made an utterly incompetent decision to invade Iraq and somehow thought things were going to turn out for the good. Well, that was never gonna happen. And suddenly other problems mount, like being woefully unprepared for disaster recovery in Kansas, caused by the shift of equipment to Iraq.
Another point also should be clarified. Some commenters said something to the effect of well, a lot of these people brought it on themselves by voting for Bush. I don't think that is called for. Many of the people affected surely were decent, ordinary folks, and just as surely some were scoundrels. Regardless, the only appropriate identification of them all right now is as victims of a terrible natural disaster. They deserve our sympathy and support. That doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that votes for Bush helped enable the terrible response. But at this point, I'm more focused on getting them the help they need, as I hope they put possible political/cultural differences aside for those of us in NYC on 9/11, and as I hope they will again if we're attacked again. Even if they didn't back then, it's still the right attitude to take towards their emergency. An F5 tornado is simply a horrible thing to endure, and to recover from.]