Hear the wind. Hear the Wind Blow. See the Preznit. See the Preznit Blow. Regularly.

Now that the pre-initial-earliest assesments of the damage from Katrina are starting to come in, it's looking like one fact is undeniable. Mississippi and Louisiana sure would like to have some of their own National Guard folks at home to help with recovery. Instead, their troops are over in Baghdad helping to establish the First Irani Gulf Client State on behalf of Tehran.

And their neighbors are waiting for other states whose Guard and Reserve units can spare supplies, personnel and equipment to send them south to help the residents of the hard-hit states cope with their losses.

With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday -- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.

As the devastation threatened to overwhelm state resources, federal authorities called on the Pentagon to mobilize active-duty aircraft, ships and troops and set up an unprecedented task force to coordinate a wider military response, said officials from the Northern Command, which oversees homeland defense.
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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.

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.

So, when do Jenna and Not-Jenna join the Guard to head on down to help direct traffic, and party with the victims of Katrina? Oh, never? Gee, I'm shocked.