Tornado exposes an inconvenient fact

Until the killer tornado hit, Sgt. Jessie Davila was Greensburg’s sole casualty of the war.

Now the whole community is taking a hit, as the Kansas National Guard is short on heavy equipment for tornado relief. Bulldozers, trucks and all the rest are over in Iraq.

Ah, but we’re not supposed to mention that, as Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius learned this week.

No, to state fact is to play politics, we are told — at least when those facts embarrass the Bush administration.

Or when those facts might poke holes in the myth that the Iraq war is being fought at no cost back home to anyone but the families of soldiers like Davila, a Kansas guardsman killed last year by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

But Sebelius did bring up the equipment shortage. As a result, she’s taking hits from the White House and its defenders, just as the Democratic governor of Louisiana did when she suggested the feds were likewise ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina.

Sebelius made her remark about the Guard on Sunday. The next day, bloggers, letter writers and right-wing talk radio took after the Democrat, first by calling her a political opportunist.

Don't look behind the curtain Dorothy!!!!!

Kansas-based units of the National Guard have access to only 40 percent of the trucks, front-end loaders and other heavy equipment assigned to it.

When reporters asked him about this, Kansas’ senior senator and presidential long shot, Sam Brownback, was miffed. He said that it was not in the least bit pertinent and that Sebelius should not have brought it up.

“I think what we need to do is to focus on what we need here now and not draw a broader political question in,” Brownback said.

No, sir. Wouldn’t want to be asking any broader political questions.

Because if you did, then the rest of us might wonder what might happen to us if our town or our neighborhood was flattened by a tornado or swept away by floodwaters.

Next thing you know, we might realize that everything is not A-OK with regard to disaster-relief readiness, with Greensburg as a not-so-shining example.

Now that the poor, white, and pissed been hit, and there's no uniform complicity in keeping a lid on it, no Black face to paint it over with in the collective psyche, hmm.....,