Sorry, It's NOT Bush's Fault

Annie

Diamond Member
Nov 22, 2003
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I'm not a Bush apologist, anyone who's read my posts knows that. At the same time, regarding this whole Katrina brouhaha, it was NOT a fed breakdown. Blame the governor and mayor.

What I DO blame the fed for, is the most stupid idea ever, the $2000 ATM card.

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/18984/

So many links:

"Political Issues Snarled Plans for Troop Aid"

From The New York Times:

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.

For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take command of the effort. 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 began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration’s senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

Well, yes and no. The plan assumed that should first responders be incapacitated, the Governor, too, would be incapacitated, or else that the still-acting Governor, short of first responders, would turn control over to the feds in order to expedite replacements for those incapacited first responders (which has nothing whatever to do with FEMA, who had already pre-staged and was already coordinatng agencies).

Here, Blanco decided to keep control—a decision that hamstrung the Administration legally, as we shall see.

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 Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.

While combat 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.

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.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.

And therein lies the rub, as we’ve discussed now on several occasions: In order for active duty troops (under Posse Comitatus) to have the authority to act in a law enforcement capacity, one of two things must happen: a) The Governor cede control to federal authorities, which didn’t (and still hasn’t) happened; or b) The President invoke the Insurrection Act (which doesn’t typically apply to looting situations), in which case he would be forcing the Governor out of power against her will, and would be committing a potentially impeachable offense.

"I need everything you have got,” Ms. Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Monday, after the storm hit.

In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. “Nobody told me that I had to request that,” Ms. Blanco said. “I thought that I had requested everything they had. We were living in a war zone by then.”

By Wednesday, she had asked for 40,000 soldiers.

"I thought that I had requested everything they had”? Nonsense. First of, on Monday, New Orleans was manifestly not a “war zone,” which leads me to believe Ms. Blanco’s mental timeline is off a bit. Second, Blanco is the Governor of a state, and so we must assume she has at least some knowledge of the Constitution and of the powers granted the head of a state. Therefore, she simply could not have thought she was asking for “everything they had” without first surrendering command control—or else, what she was asking for was active duty military troops who who were legally constrained from working law enforcement.

Both of which scenarios don’t reflect well on the Governor, I’m afraid.

In the discussions in Washington, also at issue was whether active-duty troops could respond faster and in larger numbers than the Guard.

By last Wednesday, Pentagon officials said even the 82nd Airborne, which has a brigade on standby to move out within 18 hours, could not arrive any faster than 7,000 National Guard troops, which are specially trained and equipped for civilian law enforcement duties.

In the end, the flow of thousands of National Guard soldiers, especially military police, was accelerated from other states.

Meaning, if I have this straight, that once Blanco finally asked for additional troops (on Wednesday, via EMAC), additional Guard units from neighboring states pored in to quell the civil unrest—and did so faster than could active military. And because Guard units under the Governor’s control are allowed to keep the peace, this seems the best course of action.

Still, the plot thickens:

But one senior Army officer expressed puzzlement that active-duty troops were not summoned sooner, saying 82nd Airborne troops were ready to move out from Fort Bragg, N.C., on Sunday, the day before the hurricane hit.

The call never came, administration officials said, in part because military officials believed Guard troops would get to the stricken region faster and because administration civilians worried that there could be political fallout if federal troops were forced to shoot looters.

Louisiana officials were furious that there was not more of a show of force, in terms of relief supplies and troops, from the federal government in the middle of last week. As the water was rising in New Orleans, the governor repeatedly questioned whether Washington had started its promised surge of federal resources.

“We needed equipment,” Ms. Blanco said in an interview. “Helicopters. We got isolated.”

Aides to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored.

In a separate discussion last weekend, the governor also 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 National Guard.

[...]

After the hurricane passed New Orleans and the levees broke, flooding the city, it became increasingly evident that disaster-response efforts were badly bogged down.

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.

The issue of federalizing the response was one of several legal issues considered in a flurry of meetings at the Justice Department, the White House and other agencies, administration officials said.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales urged Justice Department lawyers to interpret the federal law creatively to help local authorities, those officials said. For example, federal prosecutors prepared to expand their enforcement of some criminal statutes like anti-carjacking laws that can be prosecuted by either state or federal authorities.

On the issue of whether the military could be deployed without the invitation of state officials, the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit within the Justice Department that provides legal advice to federal agencies, concluded that the federal government had authority to move in even over the objection of local officials.

This act was last invoked in 1992 for the Los Angeles riots, but at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson of California, and has not been invoked over a governor’s objections since the civil rights era - and before that, to the time of the Civil War, administration officials said. Bush administration, Pentagon and senior military officials warned that such an extreme measure would have serious legal and political implications.

Bottom line, from what I can tell, is that you have a Governor who doesn’t know the law, is confused about request protocols, and who—in spite of all this— refuses to give up the authority necessary to make it legally possible for her to get what it is she wanted and her state needed.

For its part, the Administration had to decide, in light of those facts, how best to overcome the legal obstacles thrown up by Ms Blanco’s dithering and recalcitrance.

At least, I think that’s what I’m getting out of this.

Because the fact is, it’s very late, and I’m very tired, so I may be very wrong.

Discuss.

****
update: Glenn has more. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan is completing his transformation into a Kos Diarist:

It seems to me that the context and the full quote are important. The context shows that both president Bush and governor Blanco screwed up in equal measure.

Not sure how he figures that: every move the President and his staff made was predicated on a Blanco decision. Had she known the law or, less broadly, the mandates of her own job, it seems to me that she would have (via EMAC) been able to expedite the arrival of additional Guard troops under her command who, unlike active duty forces, would’ve had the legal capacity to maintain law and order.
 
Kathianne said:
I'm not a Bush apologist, anyone who's read my posts knows that. At the same time, regarding this whole Katrina brouhaha, it was NOT a fed breakdown. Blame the governor and mayor.

What I DO blame the fed for, is the most stupid idea ever, the $2000 ATM card.

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/18984/

So many links:

Good article. Seems as though politics and posturing made "leaders" to afraid to act and an already raped FEMA was exposed for all to see ( as well as the ghetto mentality of the citizens who had to or decided to stay behind).
 
Infrequently, even a liberal rag like the NYT will print the truth. I am a bit surprised it wasn't done in the current liberal fashion: yes,blancoandnaginscrewedup,(smallest print possible to indicate insignificance) BUT BUSH IS OUR PRESIDENT. HIS SCREWUP IS WORSE, AND WE SHOULD BE DISCUSSING THAT.
 
Adam's Apple said:
Infrequently, even a liberal rag like the NYT will print the truth. I am a bit surprised it wasn't done in the current liberal fashion: yes,blancoandnaginscrewedup,(smallest print possible to indicate insignificance) BUT BUSH IS OUR PRESIDENT. HIS SCREWUP IS WORSE, AND WE SHOULD BE DISCUSSING THAT.

That was the tactic employed by NBC on Dateline Thursday. The kept skipping right over the failings of local and state preparedness and kept bashing the federal response.

I haven't heard anyone ask the important questions like , "Why wasn't there emergency water, food, and medical supplies prepositioned at the Superdome and Convention Center when they knew based on the results of Hurricane Ivan a year earlier that they would have to shelter up to 100,000 people?" Or, "Why didn't Blanco send in every available means of mass transit to evacuate as many people as possible before the storm hit?"
 
MissileMan said:
That was the tactic employed by NBC on Dateline Thursday. The kept skipping right over the failings of local and state preparedness and kept bashing the federal response.

I haven't heard anyone ask the important questions like , "Why wasn't there emergency water, food, and medical supplies prepositioned at the Superdome and Convention Center when they knew based on the results of Hurricane Ivan a year earlier that they would have to shelter up to 100,000 people?" Or, "Why didn't Blanco send in every available means of mass transit to evacuate as many people as possible before the storm hit?"

A few of us have asked those questions right on this board. But turn on the TV, and you would think Governor Blanco did everything right; if you hear her name at all, that is. That is why I look forward to hearings on this. Let the truth come out. Of course, the MSM will still twist the reportage to suit their lib propoganda needs.
 
I really hope they don't do the debit card. big mistake. I Still don't see how they would ever regulate who gets it anyhow.

let me know if that deal hits the bowl.
 

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