Boxer’s BDS

I heard last night on John Gibson’s show that California Senator Barbara Boxer blamed California’s wildfires burning out of control on the fact that President Bush had deployed California’s National Guard to Iraq. Well, I scoured the internet for nearly an hour looking for the quote and since I couldn’t find it, I scrapped the post. Well, Gateway Pundit (characteristically) has a link to it this morning;

California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer complained on Capitol Hill Tuesday that the ability of the state’s National Guard to respond to disasters like the fires has been compromised because too much of its equipment and personnel are committed in Iraq.

Even the excerpted transcript on her Senate website taken from the particular time the comment was supposed to have been made has the comment scrubbed. So I guess her staff was fairly embarrassed that the Senator’s stretch exceeded her grasp. Nevertheless,  Paul McHale, the Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security probably anticipated BDS infecting the Californians;

Asked if the commitment of more than 170,000 U.S. troops in Iraq will affect what the military can send to the domestic emergency, McHale said:

“I can tell you unequivocally that the ongoing war-fighting activities … have had no negative effect at all (on) our ability to provide sufficient forces to assist civilian authorities in fighting the wildfires…. There is no manpower shortage.”

The article continues to list the assets the federal government is providing the efforts in California. It’s pretty staggering. So anyway, Boxer’s rant reminded me of the cartoon I saw at Flopping Aces this morning;

Hey, Don Carl – did you notice how many times I refered to California in this post? Why do you guys keep sending Boxer back to the Senate?

Category: Politics