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Here's what Lt. Gen. Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau said last week re: the idea that National Guard deployments to Iraq hampered the reponse to Katrina:

"We can handle the overseas war-fight commitment and still defend our homeland and support the Department of Homeland Security simultaneously," Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told a Pentagon news conference.

But according to this recent AP article on ABCNews.com:

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. Sep 10, 2005 — The deployment of thousands of National Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina struck hindered those states' initial storm response, military and civilian officials said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day at most of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq.

"Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Blum.

...

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose waterfront home here was washed away in the storm, told reporters that the absence of the deployed Mississippi Guard units made it harder for local officials to coordinate their initial response.

"What you lost was a lot of local knowledge," Taylor said, as well as equipment that could have been used in recovery operations.

"The best equipment went with them, for obvious reasons," especially communications equipment, he added.

...

Asked on Tuesday about critics who said the commitment of large numbers of troops to the Iraq conflict hindered the military's response to Hurricane Katrina, Rumsfeld said, "Anyone who's saying that doesn't understand the situation."

I guess Lt. Gen. Blum and 'military and civilian officials' don't "understand the situation" as clearly as Mr. Rumsfeld.