Fuzzy Pictures of What Went Wrong

I don’t think we’ve begun to get the full scope of everything that went wrong on a national level with this thing, but some information is beginning to trickle out, and it’s likely to prompt a Congressional investigation. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) is saying that someone needs to be held accountable for the evident breakdowns in the nation's emergency response capabilities. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) is questioning whether we really have enough National Guard resources to respond with so many troops in Iraq. I hope that Congress is actually determined to genuinely get to the bottom of something for a change.

Anyway, something that I have not been able to understand at all (which is why I haven’t written about it) is why Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, whose job it would be under a natural disaster scenario just such as this, didn’t earlier request National Guard assistance from other states. Part of the reason certainly seems to be incompetence:

Maj. Gen. Thomas Cutler, who leads the Michigan National Guard, said he anticipated a call for police units and started preparing them, but couldn't go until states in the hurricane zone asked them to come.

"We could have had people on the road Tuesday," Cutler said. "We have to wait and respond to their need."

The Michigan National Guard was asked for military police by Mississippi late Tuesday and by Louisiana officials late Wednesday. The state sent 182 MPs to Mississippi on Friday and had 242 headed to Louisiana on Saturday.

Another part of the problem seems to be that, because New Orleans’ police force fell to shit, any National Guard coming in was going to be required to perform law enforcement duties, separate agreements for the authorization of those activities had to be executed.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

But, Lt. Gen. Steven H. Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon, says that work only took “minutes to execute.” So where, exactly, was the hold-up? In Louisiana, or D.C.?

All of that said, if the governors of the affected states were going a piss-poor job, it is still within the president’s purview to see to it that shit gets done:

Bush had the legal authority to order the National Guard to the disaster area himself, as he did after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks . But the troops four years ago were deployed for national security protection, and presidents of both parties traditionally defer to governors to deploy their own National Guardsmen and request help from other states when it comes to natural disasters.

In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the government quickly put private cargo and passenger planes into service.

The CRAF provision has been activated twice, once for the Persian Gulf War and again for the Iraq war.

No definitive conclusions yet. Just passing on the news.