ok, i don’t understand US politics - obviously. Little of this article actually made any sense to me.
@DarthMaximus:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana’s governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush’s senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor.
if this was San Fran and an earthquake, would this be necessary? And i didn’t get from the rest of the article why it would be “necessary to seize control” in order to make convoys and trains physically move faster and for troops to deploy faster.
Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco’s control. The debate was triggered as officials began to realize that Hurricane Katrina exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration’s senior homeland security officials, the hurricane showed the failure of their plan to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated and unable to act quickly until reinforcements arrive on the scene.
are these guys idiots? I mean 9/11 made it obviou that entire firehouses might be decimated in the event of a catastrophe. And again - you guys have hurricanes, torndados, earthquakes and volcanos. How is the possibility of local help being taken out not accounted for?? If anything, on the federal level, this is the only thing that should be accounted for (as on the local level one would hope that they would be working on the assumption of local forces being in play - presumably if they were out of commission, then so might the people who would only be able to command them (and not national guard types).
As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.
To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Governor Blanco would have resisted surrendering control of the military relief mission as Bush Administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established. While troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.
idiots.
“we need help”
“we can’t give you help as i need the legal authority of the insurrection act”
“but there is an insurrection”
“well, you may not want to let us help you by deploying troops before the chaos for which they are needed resolves”
But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.
“Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.
it was ok in other people’s countries where they were actively killing people . . . .
Anyway - why would it have been necessary to actually take command rather than say “can we help you and how? Here are the resources - do with them what you require”.
The governor illustrated her stance when, overnight Friday, she rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana Guard.
the article does not say why she rejected this.
But the call never came, in part because military officials believed National Guard troops would get there faster and because administration civilians were worried that there could be political fallout if federal troops were forced to shoot looters, administration officials said.
so what would happen if they DIDN’T shoot looters? I guess things would be the same except there would be fewer looters (i’m not about to throw a chair through an electronics store window with a dozen solders down the street).
The Pentagon is reviewing events from the time the hurricane reached full strength and bore down on New Orleans and five days later when Mr. Bush ordered 7,200 active-duty soldiers and Marines to the scene.
why did it take 5 days? This makes no sense. Either they weren’t needed - in which case why send them, or they were needed right away - in which case why wait??
Justice Department lawyers, who were receiving harrowing reports from the area, considered whether active-duty military units could be brought into relief operations even if state authorities gave their consent - or even if they refused.
“ring . . . hello? would you like some active-duty military units?”
“YES! PLEASE!!”
that did not take so much consideration, i don’t think.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that deployment of National Guard soldiers to Iraq, including a brigade from Louisiana, did not affect the relief mission, but Governor Blanco said her state troops were missed. “Over the last year we have had about 5,000 out, at one time,” Governor Blanco said. “They are on active duty, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That certainly is a factor.”
By Friday, National Guard reinforcements had arrived, and a truck convoy of 1,000 Guard soldiers brought relief supplies - and order - to the convention center area.
i’m amazed that the effects of having 5000-odd solders in the middle east was even a question - especially given that they might actually have been there at day 0 rather than waiting to get 1000 troops . . . .
“This event has exposed, perhaps ultimately to our benefit, a deficiency in terms of replacing first responders who tragically may be the first casualties,” Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, said.
Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, has suggested the active-duty troops be trained and equipped to intervene if front-line emergency personnel are stricken. But the Pentagon’s leadership remains unconvinced that this plan is sound, suggesting instead that the national emergency response plans should be revised to draw reinforcements initially from civilian police, firefighters, medical personnel and hazardous-waste experts in other states not affected by a disaster.
again - this is pretty sad. One would expect at the federal level that they would look at exactly this scenario. Especially in light of 9/11. In fact - i would be looking at not only scenarios where the local help is taken out, but various layers of potential help is crippled. Afterall - the pentagon kind of absorbed a bit of damage on 9/11 - why not assume that a future terrorist attack would be even nastier? On a local or even state or federal level??
