You need an education on the role of National Guard. It's primary mission is to serve as a readily availabe pool of trained soldiers to augment the active force in order to fight and win the nations wars, not provide disaster relief. These helicopters are paid for by the Defense Department, not the States, and therefore, the States don't own them.

Sorry, mate. You twisted the facts in your intent to slap down the article. Here is mission statement directly from the Nebraska National Guard website:

Citizens in Time of Peace

When a natural disaster strikes, whether it’s a tornado, flood, fire or blizzard, State Governors send their National Guard into action. These citizen soldiers become local heroes; saving lives, protecting property, and helping communities get back on their feet.

The Nebraska National Guard is always there to help our communities. National Guard units are located throughout the state and, when needed, can be mobilized to help the citizens of Nebraska.

Soldiers in Time of Need

The National Guard plays an important role in the defense of American interests around the world. The Nebraska National Guard receives the same training as the United States Army.

Overnight, Nebraskans can be in their military uniforms, on their way to protect our nation and its interests as part of America’s Total Force.

Always There, Always Ready.

The national guards are to protect us the "people" from a rouge federal government military. The federal governments sole purpose is to protect our constitutional solvrenty as a nation, our borders!

Actually, having been a recruiter, Danny Eakins is right in his email. The jargon shared by Zealander is nothing more than a feel good sales pitch.

"Danny Eakins" is a paid GOP blogger to desceminate propaganda. The GOP pays a small army of people to spread disinformation. They've admitted this & its easy to see if you spend enough time looking at news online. Most of the time they are the first to leave a comment & its almost always exactly the talking points of the GOP, word for word. I have about 7000 hours of experience over six years following this trend of right-wing propaganda. They don't care about morals, ethics, facts, or laws.

And "Julian Etheridge" claims to be a recruiter, which makes him the least trustworthy & makes a living lying to children to send them to murder & be maimed or killed.

I especially like the avoidance of the issue by these two people (Julian & Danny), which is the taking of vital resources from our country, which could & should be saving lives here, but instead is being used to slaughter people under false pretenses on the other side of the planet for oil companies. These people have no shame.

And "Lewis Goode" is a paid Democrat shill, which makes anything he says suspect.

Danny lies, and he knows it. Typical of a repub, twisting facts to suit their power grabs.
The NG has always been first and foremost, a home defense / disaster response branch of the armed service:

"During peace times, the National Guard is commanded by the governor, In it's "state" role, the National Guard assists local law enforcement agencies during emergencies at the direction of the governor. The distribution of soldiers, equipment and facilities across the state allows the National Guard to respond quickly and efficiently to emergencies statewide."

And, yes, "danny e". is a paid Repug shill.

Hmm, the only two states that have enough equipment just happen to be Bush & Cheney's home states. What an amazing coincidence!

Hmmm, so Wyoming still has 70% of its National Guard equipment and capability?

This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Wyoming is Richard B. Cheney's home state, would it?

The National Guard or the International Guard?

Where will more lives be saved? We need these helicopters sitting around where they may or may not be used. Or we can positively saving lives. For the humanitarians,how many lives will be lost to genicide or does it matter. It was never mentioned that when we left Vietnam the result was 7 million killed.But it wasn't important or the news would have picked it up. The democrats had been talking of going into Iraq for five years before the vote was cast,so they were going regardless. Instead of having to answer for his wrong doing, "culture of corruption" Harry Reid tells the world we can not win this war.Notice since thedemocrats came out on their was stance just before the election. Since, we are loosing 21 more so
ldiers per month. Even if it were the truth it would be wrong. Just one more obstacle for our troop to hurtle. With Harry it just politics.

"So twenty million human beings were sacrificed to the satanic war god"
Dan Your accusations leave out some important facts. If anyone had the backbone to hold Germany to Stipulation set forth at the end of WWI, WWII would not have occured. Stalin killed as many as 23 million of his own people. Hitler was almost as bad. But the whole world turned a blind eye while Hitler prepared for war.Lucky for us he made several catistropic blunders.

MILITARY helicopters are extraordinarily expensive. They have one purpose: rapidly and safely deploying and retrieving soldiers in combat.

For these state-of-the-art war-fighting machines to sit folded up and idle on some dusty, desolate old tarmac in the U.S. Midwest while soldiers need them overseas is INSANE.

Thus, this anti-war blogger Brian Ross is insane for posting such ridiculous nonsense to his employer's website. I am glad he is not in control of our military resources.

There are plenty of private, semi-private helicopters that can be volunteered or marshaled in the event of a big disaster like a devastating flood.

I found it interesting to note that the Wyoming National Guard is doing quite well with eight Blackhawk helicopters and more than seventy percent of all its authorized equipment on hand. Dick Cheney is a former U.S. Congressman from Wyoming. I wonder if that has anything to do with how well the Wyoming Guard is doing with equipment? It appears, that Cheney takes care of his own--unless your name is Scooter Libby.

Here we go again. I agree that we are too dependent upon the national guard for the war. Thank you Bill Clinton for the peace dividend. If we did not cut the active duty forces in half on top of the 25% cut during the elder Bush years, this would not be an issue.

We need to win in Iraq. Let's stop whining and restart some of the factories being closed down like we did in WW2 and build what we need now. Let's get in this war to win. Then we will be able to take care of home and abroad.

"Thanks for the comments NonZionist"

Hate to sound pesimestic but this war was looking for a place to happen. Been a draw for almost a dozen nations wanting to get involved. Only good thing is we have sent many life-long terrorist to see allah. These were many of the people that have come to Iraq. So they have lost many "professionals".
In the past most were to poor to have easy access to America. Now that is starting to change. Half a dozen suicide bombers here could really cause some devastation and many lives lost.

Remember Bill Clinton giving away two Huey helicopters to buy votes for one of his bills that congress was voting on? After homestead airbase was destroyed by the hurricane,and determined was no longer needed. Bill had it rebuilt for a vote from a congressman. All the time he was cutting up thousands of M-14 rifles. He didn't get them all for I see soldiers using them in pictures from Iraq.

Living in Kansas, I laughed when the govenor decried he absence of NG helicopters and trucks. It is easy for a govenor to call a ready working party that the state does not have to pay overtime for in times of emergency, but by the same token, every state has a taxpayer funded highway department with a boat load of new orange trucks often seen parked at rest stops. The only problem is that you have to pay the state employees overtime wheras with NG personeel the bill goes to DC. It is all about money. Does the state cough up the dough or does the congress.
As for the NG being here for tornado and flood duty, thier primary mission is to support the AD forces. that is why they are called citizen soldiers and not citizen disaster workers.

Ofcourse they choppers are needed in Iraq. It is far more important to kill several thousand Iraqis trying to defend their country from an invader then to save a few square miles of forrest or the handfull of people who live there.

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No, he's doing his job.

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Conveient for the United States to enter the war they helped create just as all combatants were exhausted.

Just as it was conveient for the United States to attack Saddam in '90 after he'd been exhausted by a war instigated by the United States, a war in which both combatants were armed by the same United States government.

If any of you believed they did this out to save the world for democracy, then you continue to lend aid and comfort to the true enemies of our country, the ones who are continuing to get us into wars which even the father of our country would've denounced as un-American.

That's right, people. George Washington would've been appalled by this so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom, simply because the war was motivated by the self-interest of an empowered minority, rather than by our interests as a nation.

No, I haven't forgotten about 9/11. Nor have I forgotten that Saddamn Hussein was a secular dictator—a secular dictator supported by the current President Bush's father, his Vice-President and many of his cronies for over three decades.

Secular.

As in not religious,as in not affiliated with the brand of fundamentalist Islam which claims to be the basis of the al-Qaeda movement, as in someone who jihadists would want removed from power.

Such as the jihadists in the Saudi royal family who supported America's first attempt to remove Saddam from power.

I've also not forgotten that the man originially behind al-Qaeda was trained by our CIA and NSA(as were the Taliban).

And, no, Washington probably lacked expirience with folks willing to crash airplanes full of civilians into buildings full of same to get to Paradise.

He was, however, familiar with the acts of terror committed or attempted in his time.

And, with the many excuses and entangling alliances the British made to justify dragging American colonists into a European war which did not concern them or their fellow British subjects, and how such wars and the alliances behind them led to imperialism and to the corruption of the democratic principle.

That was why he spoke out against such things in his farewell address.

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But, they are supposed to be citizens first and foremost, something which seems to have forgotten over the last two hundred-odd years.

Now, returning to the topic, the National Guard—in its various guises—has been the active-duty military in this country for most of our country's existence, Washington, amongst others, opposing ANY standing "professional" army as running counter to the letter and spirit of the law of the land, and completely contradictory to the democratic principle, this stemming from the use of mercenaries("regimented assassins" as Voltaire called them) in colonial and European wars, including the then-recent American Revolution.

That law, the Second Amendment in particular, would seem to indicate that militias comprised of citizens would be the land and naval forces the President would have responsibility for when called to arms in times of war or national emergency.

That militias of the several States would be subject to immeidate activation in times of domestic emergencies, such as natural disasters.

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It is so easy to blame the previous President for the mistakes of the current one, especially if they are of allegedly opposing parties.

And, no doubt, Clinton must share some of the blame for the current disaster, as must the elder President Bush and his Defense Secretary, the man who is now his son's Vice-President.

There's plenty of blame to go around, more than enough for each and everyone of us Americans to share in, as we were the ones who put these people in power, knowing what they were capable of.

But playing the blame game, especially along partisan lines, is ludicrous and clouds the real issues concerning our entry into Iraq, the mess we've made of things, and the direction this is taking our country.

Scare tactics and patriotic sound bytes won't resolve the situation in Iraq.

Nor will anti-war sound bytes from people who supported the war when it was a cakewalk, only to turn against it after the people started shooting back and it became clear that our boys wouldn't be home by Christmas, and this war wasn't the blowout against an inferior opponent its backers said it would be.

Pumping up the number of soldiers in Iraq won't fix things, not against people who aren't hesitant about fighting a war of attrition to begin with.

Pulling our people out won't fix things, not to mention the fact it is the last word in gall to say,"we smashed your country and unleashed hordes of gunmen and suicide bombers to terrorize you, but hey, we got rid of the guy we put in to screw you over to begin with, so our job's done. It's your problem now."

These are the easy ways out, people, and, frankly, it's going to take hard work and cooperation from everyone to come up with a solution to clean up the mess we made of things over there for the last three decades.