WASHINGTON (Map, News) - President Bush is pushing ahead with a visit to fire-ravaged California Thursday, despite complaints from the state’s top Democrat that the trip is a “public relations” stunt that will distract firefighters.

“I got some doubt about the value of President Bush coming out here,” said California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi on MSNBC. “How many times did he go to New Orleans and still made promises, but hasn’t delivered?”

It was a pointed reference to Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans in 2005 and exposed weaknesses in the emergency preparedness of local, state and federal authorities. Although Bush was criticized by liberals for not visiting New Orleans soon enough, Garamendi accused the president of visiting California too soon.

“It’s public relations,” Garamendi said. “OK, President Bush comes out, we’ll be polite. But frankly, that’s not the solution. How about sending our National Guard back from Iraq so that we have those people available here to help us?”

Bush told reporters he was “looking forward to going out to California.”

“I want the people in Southern California to know that Americans all across this land care deeply about them, we’re concerned about their safety, we’re concerned about their property, and we offer our prayers and hopes that all will turn out fine in the end,” he said. “In the meantime, they can rest assured that the federal government will do everything we can to help put out these fires.”

Garamendi was not the only Democrat to link the Iraq war to the wildfires ravaging Southern California. Sen. Barbara Boxer said firefighting efforts are hampered by the fact that so many troops are in Iraq.

“Right now, we are down 50 percent in terms of our National Guard equipment, because they’re all in Iraq, the equipment, half of the equipment, so we really need help,” she said.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, called that assertion “a big stretch.”

“We got 2.5 million people under arms. We got less than 8 percent of those people in the war fighting,” the presidential candidate told MSNBC. “You get a 60-mile-an-hour wind hitting tender dry sagebrush, you can put the entire U.S. Army in front of it and you are not going to stop it.”

bsammon@dcexaminer.com