The Old Grey Lady hits the jackpot

True, we are not great fans of the New York Times, but objectively speaking, when they're right, you gotta give 'em credit. And for once they are incredibly on the money. Credit the writing team of Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker:

Political Issues Snarled Plans for Military Help After Storm

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.

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.

But it was much worse than that. Disaster plans did not include a scenario where the governor of a state might be unfit for command, though be unwilling to relinquish authority.

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.

In our view it was clearly demonstrated that Gov. Blanco was unable or unwilling to execute her command authority AND lawlessness and needless loss of life WAS the result!

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.

Perhaps the problem was giving Gov. Blanco too many options, which in her mind seemed "complicated and complex" and required at least another 24 hours of indecision.

The Insurrection Act was last invoked in 1992 in Los Angeles during the riots, but at the request of then Gov. Pete Wilson.

While the NYT article details Blanco's reluctance to give up command authority and perhaps even her indecisiveness, it does not get into other important issues of why Louisiana authorities kept vital supplies and relief personnel from entering New Orleans and assisting the refugees at the Super Dome and Civic Center. Those actions would seem to go beyond mere reluctance and misunderstanding; it would argue for a purposeful turf war and obstruction of outside help, while at the same time Blanco was criticizing the federal government for being absent.