So do you think that if there weren't so many resources overseas, they would've been able to fight the fire better? I kept hearing people on the news talk about "there just weren't enough firefighters, trucks, etc.."

No. There are a finite number of firefighters in CA. Firefighters are coming in from Northern California, AZ, NV, and elsewhere. Cities pay for and maintain firefighters, not the feds. If anyone got called up for duty in Iraq in the Nat'l Guard, their salary would have stayed w/ the fire dept. and they could have hired replacements while the others were overseas. Equipment is a matter of city and county funding.

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Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The resources overseas are trained to fight terrorism not fires. I think the magnitude of the fires is just so overwhelming, and thats why there isn't enough firemen and firewomen.

Racism? You're the one who was being racist.

...On Tuesday evening, MSNBC's Don Abrams set up an interview with California Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Cal.) thusly: But the fire storms in California`s raising tough questions about what the National Guard is extended too much to handle emergencies at home. Back in May, before the fire started, "The San Francisco Chronicle" reported that the California National Guard was down a billion dollars worth of equipment. Two hundred and nine vehicles in Iraq, including 110 humvees and 63 military trucks. According to report the California guard should have had 39 diesel generators on hand. They say it had none. The Kansas governor raised similar concerns earlier this year when she said the deployment of National Guard troops to Iraq hurt the emergency response to a deadly tornado in her state. The question -- is this another unanticipated cost of a prolonged and expensive war effort?

Care to validate that statement with some fact?

Sadly we are pawns of the media. I didn't include Duncan Hunter's response because we all know he isn't going to say anything to piss his base off. The excerpt did raise good questions though.

Meanwhile a republican is blaming environmentalist while fire fighters believe global warming has something to do with it.

Shouldn't the state of California have a fleet of Chinook helicopters especially retrofitted to carry large payloads of water? It seems like if they had 5 or 6 of these, they could at least keep really large fires like this in check by rotating them in and out to fill with sea water and dump it on the hot spots.

Do they have these in use? If not, why not?

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"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)