Lies from the WSJ's Henninger: Who Should Call The Cavalry If Katrina Call

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

September 9, 2005

WONDER LAND
By DANIEL HENNINGER

Who Should Call The Cavalry If Katrina Calls?
September 9, 2005; Page A16

"When you fly over the Gulf, it looks like a WMD exploded," Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul McHale told me this week. "Katrina very nearly approached the operational requirements of a WMD event; this was the first test of the high-end capability envisioned by the strategy."

The "strategy" is a three-month-old document called "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support." It describes the Defense Department's plans to defend the U.S. from a WMD attack or deal with the rubble and mass casualties of such an attack. Traditionally DoD has always helped civil authorities contend with the ruin of natural disasters. That Katrina's massive scale mirrored a WMD attack, obliterating a city, is a coincidence. But it raises the question of whether the states, or relatively vulnerable states like Louisiana, are up to the job of being "first responders" to a WMD attack or its natural equivalent. If they are not, we need to change some laws.

(snip)

By the Pentagon's account, it carried out these preparations without any formal Katrina-related request from FEMA or other authorities. The personnel behind the massive military effort now on display in Louisiana -- airlift evacuation, medical, supply, and the National Guard -- was on alert a week before the hurricane. According to Assistant Secretary McHale, "The U.S. military has never deployed a larger, better-resourced civil support capability so rapidly in the history of our country."


Once disaster arrives, several federal laws designed to protect state sovereignty from being swept aside by a Latin-American-style national police force dictate that a state's officials, specifically the governor, is supposed to phone the federal government and describe what they need. If asked by Homeland Security, DoD will send in the cavalry. But this is one audible at the line even Don Rumsfeld doesn't get to call.

Post-mortem investigations will surely recreate, minute by minute, how Louisiana Gov. Blanco and Homeland Security Chief Chertoff idled away their time last week. But it appears now that Gov. Blanco did not make that crucial, early, legally mandated call to the President. Absent that, FOX and CNN became the call to the White House. The media message was "do something!"

(snip)

Write to Daniel Henninger at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112623141190736207,00.html (subscription)

[Bob3]

1. Again the basic defense is that *'s role as president is

to sit on his ass and do nothing until the paperwork is complete like he's some kind of glorified DMV clerk. It doesn't wash. Not now, not ever - except for the people who need this to be true - the bushbots and their running dog lackeys in the press.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Also available WITHOUT subscription

Here 'tis --

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110007230

Enjoy!

--p!

[question everything]

4. Thanks. I cannot believe that they say that Blanco did not request

help when there are so many documents proving that she did

[nyhuskyfan]

3. What if the governor is incapicitated...

Or dead?

There are times when paperwork and chain of command issues clearly fall by the wayside. That's why the national response plan suspends these issues for incidents of national significance.

[zbdent]

5. Last thing they want is an investigation

because it will EXPOSE (if the media actually grows the balls and shows it) the lie that we already have exposed - that Bush was called/notified 8/26/2005.

They're still playing the BLAME GAME that they're accusing us of . . .

[Infomaniac]

6. So Bush Had the Authority to Act and He didn't...

because the looters were breaking "no evident federal law." Americans dying of hunger and thirst is not contrary to any of our written procedures? Did Chertoff know that Bush was evidently sitting by the phone waiting for the Governor's call and failed to advise Ms Blanco of this teeny-tiny detail about formally requesting aid in writing? Because I sure heard her ask for assistance on camera on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Does the gubbmint have an official form for this kind of thing - ya know something along the line of a DHS-CYA form? For that matter, did any of the Gulf states governors make this crucial, early, legally mandated call? I doubt it. So people in four states are enduring tremondous deprivation because of a flipping formal request? This all sounds SO lame and totally ridiculous. No wonder the state and local officials have been decrying FEMA for their petty bureacratic ways.


Post-mortem investigations will surely re-create, minute by minute, how Louisiana Gov. Blanco and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff idled away their time last week. But it appears now that Gov. Blanco did not make that crucial, early, legally mandated call to the President. Absent that, Fox and CNN became the call to the White House. The media message was "do something!" In fact, the president does have "do something" authority. It's called the Insurrection Act, which is what John Kennedy used in 1963 against Gov. George Wallace, ordering the governor's own National Guard to turn against him and forcibly integrate the University of Alabama. As to the looters, who were breaking no evident federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 explicitly forbids using the military (unless a governor uses her National Guard under "state status") in a domestic police function.