FEMA FUNDS TO STUDY NOLA EVACUATION DIVERTED

Down the rabbit hole went half a million dollars that Congress ordered FEMA to use to come up with an evacuation plan for New Orleans eight years ago. The AP story devotes quite a bit of time to suggesting we blame the federal side of FEMA, but buried deep down is the nugget that should be the lead:

FEMA typically contracts its studies to private or government entities. Kinerney, the agency spokesman, said it appeared the money went through the Louisiana government. State emergency and transportation officials said they did not recall it.

The money went to the state, and the state obviously didn't use it for its intended purpose. In fact, it seems to have gone for a study of some sort:

The $500,000 that Congress appropriated for the evacuation plan went to a commission that studied future options for the 24-mile bridge over Lake Ponchartrain, FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney said.

The hefty report produced by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission "primarily was not about evacuation," said Robert Lambert, the general manager for the bridge expressway. "In general it was an overview of all the things we need to do" for the causeway through 2016.

Lambert said he could not trace how or if FEMA money came to the commission. Nor could Shelby LaSalle, a causeway consulting engineer who worked on the plan.

It seems quite a bit of money that the feds sent to the Bayou State got sunk in places it was never intended for. Money for the levees went to fountains and Mardi Gras. This bucket of money was for evacuation plans but got diverted at the state level. That's a story, but don't expect the MSM to do much with it. Such a story will point, as it should, at the corrupt political machine that has run Louisiana practically since Reconstruction, and which deserves the lion's share of the blame for the Katrina disaster. But the MSM doesn't want to go there. "Democrats lied, people died" stings a bit.

Now that we're set to start a second reconstruction, it would be wise to cut that currupt Louisiana political machine, made up entirely of Democrats, out of the picture. But don't expect that to happen either.

By the way, this story is about evacuation plans. What photo would be more relevant to such a story than the famous AP photo of those flooded buses, a photo that shows how badly the evacuation plan went awry when disaster struck? That's not the photo that accompanies the story, though. AP chose to run some shot of levees being repaired.

Hm.

(thanks to Chris and Peg)

INTEL WARNINGS SURROUNDED U.S.S. COLE BOMBING

From President Clinton last month, recalling some information from a previous Cole bombing post:

"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."

From Able Danger today:

Members of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit known as Able Danger warned top military generals that it had uncovered information of increased al Qaeda "activity" in Aden harbor less than three weeks before the attack on the USS Cole, The Post has learned.

In the latest explosive revelation in the Able Danger saga, two former members of the data-mining team are expected to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week that they uncovered alarming terrorist activity and associations in Aden weeks before the Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombing of the U.S. warship that killed 17 sailors.

This info from 2000 on what the DIA knew may be related to Able Danger:

Pentagon officials have identified the Defense Intelligence Agency counterterrorism analyst who quit in protest a day after the bombing of the USS Cole. Kie Fallis is charging that a report he wrote on the threat of a terrorist attack in Yemen was suppressed by senior DIA officials.

And then from the NSA in the same article:

The top-secret National Security Agency report was issued about six hours after the attack. It said that terrorists were engaged in "operational planning'' for an attack and had traveled to Dubai and Beirut in preparation.

And finally from the FBI, possibly referring to that NSA report:

By the time we realized what was happening, 6:30-7:00 in the morning, that it was another terrorist attack, that it very well could be something perpetrated by the bin Laden group, John [O'Neill] immediately seized on the opportunity to say, "New York should have the team going." ...

It wasn't until later in the afternoon when O'Neill was able to convince FBI headquarters that, yes, there was intelligence out there prior to the event from bin Laden's organization that, yes, they were going to attack a U.S. ship in such a manner. They finally relented and said, "OK, if it's a bin Laden event, it should be New York.

So it looks like President Clinton was well aware that Al Qaeda was behind the USS Cole bombing from the very first hours. He should have at the very least least told his Ambassador in Yemen, Barbara Bodine, to step back and not obstruct complete FBI access. Despite the investigation issues, there was this recommendation later from his top terrorism experts, including Richard C. Clarke:

Some also say that due to the Lewinsky scandal, more action perhaps was never undertaken. In your eyes?

The interagency group on which I sat and John O'Neill sat -- we never asked for a particular action to be authorized and were refused. We were never refused. Any time we took a proposal to higher authority, with one or two exceptions, it was approved....

But didn't you push for military action after the Cole?

Yes, that's one of the exceptions.

How important is that exception?

I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated Al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.

Just as with the offer from Sudan to hand over bin Laden to U.S. custody before he went to Afghanistan (which the State Dept warned was a mistake), one man in the United States government stood in the way as a virtual defense lawyer, protecting al Qaeda's "civil rights" and demanding all but a confession from bin Laden before he would act in a military capacity.

Let me be the first to suggest that President Clinton's legacy and leadership as Commander in Chief over the U.S. military should be seen in the exact same light as Gov. Kathleen Blanco's command over the Louisiana National Guard. He protected and defended the U.S. from threats as well as she protected and defended New Orleans.

UPDATE: So what is Mr Clinton up to now?

Clinton Summit: Don't Shun Terror Groups

Antendees at the Clinton Global Initiative were told on Friday that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas should be "engaged" by the world's peace loving nations - even if their members persist in trying to destroy Israel and America.

Newsday reports that during a session on religious-political relations, Alastair Crooke, director of the British-based Conflicts Forum, said:

"Governments should engage groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who, despite their use of violence, were willing to participate in the political process and had strong credibility with many people in the Middle East."

By ignoring such groups, Crooke warned, governments risk inadvertently creating and promoting far more radical organizations.

For his part, ex-President Clinton suggested that the best way to prevent terrorists from discouraging economic growth in the Middle East was to offer businesses looking to invest there terrorism insurance.
"I think we ought to consider maybe setting up some sort of an insurance program against terror because I think there�s maybe too much fear of it," he told the group.

"So I would just like to ask that you consider setting up some sort of insurance structure where, for a modest fee, an entrepreneur could participate in pooled insurance so that if something happened because of a terrorist act they could be made whole. Then I think we�d have a lot more success in getting venture capital in there."

Figuring out more creative ways to "hustle up" venture capital for terrorists havens like Gaza? Priceless.

MORE: Updates on the new Able Danger developments and the Curt Weldon press conference.

DRIVING MISS ARIANNA

It seems that when SUV-bashing, Bush-hating, Cindy Sheehan-promoting Arianna Huffington isn't zipping about in her personal jet, she's taking rides in a gigantic fortress on wheels. Provided by the Sierra Club, in this case.

THE WRONG LESSONS

Donald Sensing writes that the federal response to Katrina is a poor model for terrorism response. Most have been arguing variations on the theme that if this is the best we can do after a storm we saw coming, we're SOL when the terrorists hit us again as we all believe that they will. But Sensing is right:

Despite the feds� shortcomings here, the response to a terrorist attack would have been very different and much quicker.

Planning for and response to natural disasters has always been primarily a local and state responsibility. Obviously, that tenet is now being re-examined, but it has held true until now. The federal role has been to fill in the gaps that states can�t fill.

But response to an attack upon the country by a foreign power has always been primarily the federal government�s responsibility.

Certainly it is true that responding to a terrorist attack will require heavy involvement by local and state governments, but I think a key point is being missed (or dismissed) by the administration�s critics: by law, politics and tradition, the federal government automatically assumes primary authority to respond to attacks by outside powers. There would be no issue with posse comitatus nor treading on state government�s rights because defending the sovereign territory of the country is inherent, by definition, in the sovereign seat of the country, which is the federal government.

He goes on to note that shortly after the planes struck the towers on 9-11, the feds had scrambled interceptor jets and put the Coast Guard on alert. I'd add that the feds also shut down airline traffic and kept it grounded until they were reasonably sure that no further attacks were imminent. The response that day was quick. A foreign power had attacked us, so worries over federalism were never relevant.

And New York city and state had competent leadership...

The scale of Katrina's destruction zone is relevant too--it was much larger, by several orders of magnitude, than the area damaged on 9-11. The only kind of attack we can face that could compare to Katrina in terms of geographical area would be an EMP attack carried out by the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon over the continental US.

Such an attack is not impossible. It can in fact be done relatively easily by a serious nuclear state with moderately advanced rocket technology, or by a terrorist outfit that has acquired the necessary hardware. But if such an attack were to occur, it would primarily destroy our communications and power grids. That would lead to chaos, but it would demand a federal response that would not require sensitivity to federalism. So incompetent governors and mayors could be pushsed aside without invoking the Insurrection Act. So the response would probably not run into as many tangles as did the Katrina response in Louisiana.

I guess that I'm saying I hope we don't learn the wrong lessons from Katrina. We don't need to turn the military into a disaster relief organization, or even make that one of the military's primary missions. Doing so will degrade our warfighting capabilities. The lessons we should learn have to do with local leadership. We need to stop treating our politicians like they're running to be our parents, and start looking for politicians who actually demonstrate the ability to think and lead without dozens of handlers telling them what to think, what to wear and how to talk. We need to learn that the best response to any disaster is to be prepared at the family, street and local levels. We need to learn that there is a limit to what the federal government should do and can do, and that those limits are almost always good.

We do not want an unlimited government and we do not want to deputize the military in all domestic crises. That does seem to be where we're headed, and I think it's a mistake.

(thanks to Peg)

END THE OCCUPATION...OF NEW ORLEANS

I'm truly at a loss for words after reading this gem, penned by the Cindy, Lady of the Moonbats. You have to read it for youself.

Quoth the Cindy, in reverse order, not that it really matters to the overall logical flow of her latest pretty pearl of wisdom:

George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power.

"Excuse his self from power." She's so wise she can bend the rules of grammar with her bare hands!

So we can't even occupy our own country now? And if we go somewhere else, presumably we have no right to squat there either. Wait, the Cindy can't think that since she's been squatting in a ditch that isn't hers outside a ranch she doesn't own in a state that has no use for her for weeks. I don't get it. It must be my fault.

If George Bush truly listened to God and read the words of the Christ, Iraq and the devastation in New Orleans would have never happened.

I don't remember the Proverb that promises a daily Bible reading will end tyranny and the threat of natural disasters for all time. The Book of Job would seem to argue against that sort of thinking. But if the Cindy says it, it must be right.

The vast majority of people who were looting in New Orleans were doing so to feed their families or to get resources to get their families out of there.

How big screen TVs in a city without electricity and expensive Fubu apparel in a flood zone fit into the Cindy's take on survivalism I'm not sure. But it must, or she wouldn't have said it.

One thing that truly troubled me about my visit to Louisiana was the level of the military presence there. I imagined before that if the military had to be used in a CONUS (Continental US) operations that they would be there to help the citizens: Clothe them, feed them, shelter them, and protect them. But what I saw was a city that is occupied. I saw soldiers walking around in patrols of 7 with their weapons slung on their backs. I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me.

I'd like to ask them what it would take for one of them to shoot the Cindy too...but that would be rude.

And I wonder, how does the Cindy expect soldiers to protect people if the soldiers are unarmed and walking around alone, as she apparently wishes they were? The looters armed themselves and shot at stranded civilians, police and even rescue workers. The Cindy expects the troops to stop that violence and protect people with what, flowers and a peace sign? I'm sure it's my fault for not understanding the Cindy's wisdom. Surely. I'm just not with it, man.

After living in a country your entire life it is so difficult to see such callous indifference on an immense scale.

"After living in a country your entire life..." As opposed to what, living outside a country your entire life? Which country? Does it matter? Does it matter that by living in one country, you live outside all the others? Well, unless you count Indian reservations, which are countries within our country. And there's that one southern African country that is surrounded by South Africa. Otherwise, I guess I'm just not with it enough to grasp the relevance of living in a country.

And I'm curious. What sort of person is the Cindy that she thinks living in an unspecified country makes seeing callous indifference--which will cost us $200 billion, making it the most expensive callous indifference in the history of the world and all countries specified and unspecified--more difficult than it would be had she lived outside an unspecified country? I guess I'm just not with it, man.

Just. Not. With. It.

But it's good to know that according to the left's new unblemished saint who possesses Absolute Moral Authority ™ , that New Orleans has been punished for the sins of George Bush, as was Iraq during Saddam's long reign of terror. In her judgement on New Orleans, she agrees with Louis Farrakhan.

The Cindy is perhaps the only person who can now bridge the gap between David Duke and Calypso Louie. She is truly the woman of our age.

(thanks to Chris)

UPDATE: No blood for chicken gumbo! turned out to be more prescient than parody.

ART IMITATES ART

Here's some prophetic humor from March 20, 2004.

Make that:

"The only memorials appeaseniks will have if they do get their way."

ALL OF THE ABOVE

That's how I voted.

(via Michelle Malkin)

THE WRONG EMPIRE

Ok, first, we're not an empire. Second, I'm not at all sure that God shows favor on nations in the way we Christians often like to think He does. God moves of His own accord for His own reasons. He very often doesn't tell any human what those reasons are for a long time.

All of that said, I think comparisons to America's present state of morality and what might have or might not have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire are specious. We're not an empire. We aren't dealing with the same circumstances that the Romans dealt with. And God doesn't often move in obvious ways, or even in ways that make sense at all to use mere humans on the ground. As Dean Esmay notes, Rome rose when it was cruel and fell after it became Christian. To take another example, Russia rose when Christianity was legal, and came apart after a few decades of barbarous athiestic Communism. The Aztecs ruled one of the most evil empires in history; contact with Christians proved to be their undoing, even though the Christians ended up enslaving and killing millions of them while building their own empire from the ruins of the Aztec's. And Japan became a unified police state largely by exterminating about half a million Christians in unspeakably cruel ways over the course of a few decades. Japan prospered mightily while Christianity was an illegal religion for 300 years, its followers crucified or beheaded, and went on to become a harsh Buddhist/Shinto empire, but one that was dismantled by a better armed majority Christian republic--the United States. Was that divine justice? It's hard to say.

If there's a historic empire with which the US might be usefully compared, it isn't Rome. It's the Babylonian Empire of the era of Daniel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah. The Babylonians were a pagan nation that quickly rose to world power status in the Middle East circa 500-600 BC. Their rise was, according to scripture, allowed by God so that he might use them as His sword of justice for a while. The Babylonians for the most part tolerated the followers of Yahweh, by not killing every one of them, but the Babylonians uprooted Israel and scattered them, replaced their Jewish identities with Babylonian names and tried once or twice to just wipe out the Jewish faith altogether. Yet God used them to mete out justice to various misbehaving tribes, including the Israelites, after warning them that if they didn't change their ways punishment was coming. Babylon paid no attention whatsoever to God's way of thinking, yet He allowed them power so that He might use them.

The United States rose as a secular state in a world of monarchies and theocracies. Monarchs more often than not claim a divine right to misrule; theocracies carry that idea a few steps further. The US has been used--by God or history, whichever you prefer--to destroy the old oligarchies, monarchies, theocracies and modern tyrannies one right after the other. The US helped finish off the British monarchy's power, broke the Islamic pirate threat of the 19th century, then went on to bleed itself over slavery, squash the German monarchy and the Nazi regime that followed it, crush the brutal fascist regimes in Japan and Italy, and then waged a long-term war to defeat godless Communism. All while our moral behavior went this way and that, from the Deists to the various revivalists to the Existentialists to the Victorians to the socialists to the flappers to the age of Ike and Kennedy and Reagan and Clinton. And all while we were busy destroying Indian nations, for the most part not exactly tolerant, peace-loving cultures themselves, and separating people according to skin color.

Like every nation, America has its genius and its flaws. It's a human enterprise, more successful and vibrant and powerful and livable than any before it, but still human and therefore imperfect. Its use to humanity has been to spread freedom of all kinds, including the freedom of religion along with the right to thumb one's nose at God. We have also been used, by God or history, to destroy some of history's worst villains and to promote the value of the individual soul. That's a cultural mission that we're still carrying out. America's use to God, though? That's very much up to Him. I see parallels between the US and the Babylonians in our track record of dealing with humanity's worst traits and tyrants, but beyond that I'm not going to plot our trajectory based on what happened way back in Babylonian times. And I don't think Rome's trajectory is of much utility either.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: KATRINA EDITION

Hope was the theme of the President's speech, he hit it often and he hit it well. In the face of severe criticism, he offered a plan to rebuild New Orleans and the entire disaster zone. It's a serious plan and deserves a fair hearing on Capitol Hill.

The rebuilding will not happen quickly and will not happen on the cheap. There is no way to rebuild a disaster area the size of Britian in a way that won't cost an enormous amount of money. As a nation, we will have to make some hard choices in the years ahead.

Liberals will, or should, love the return to big government that the President offered tonight. It will take a massive federal approach to bring a city back from the dead. Conservatives will, or should, love the attention his plans pay to free enterprise and tax relief. The Gulf Opportunity Zone is a master stroke, which offers much to minority business owners and indeed to businesses and industry throughout the affected regions.

I found myself a little uncomfortable with the President's proposal to increase the military's role in disaster relief. While it's a fact that the military is the sole arm of the government that is capable of meeting the logistical challenges that major disasters pose, it is also true that the military has that capability so that it might fight and win America's wars, anywhere and anytime, and be ready to defend our country and our allies whenever and wherever threats arise. I worry that by adding yet another mission to the military's plate, we will degrade its combat capabilities. The military isn't the Peace Corps, and it should not be treated like it's the government's charitable arm. Perhaps we should reform FEMA and other organizations like the Peace Corps so that they can handle disasters in a more agile way. To me that seems to be a better approach over the long term than putting another task in front of our military, which has been fighting two simmering wars for four years.

Washington will need to grow up in the coming days and weeks. The sticker price for rebuilding after hurricane Katrina will be gigantic. Contrary to Rep. Tom Delay's declaration of victory over wasteful spending this week, the federal budget will have to be cut in some areas to make room for the costs of rebuilding. We will need grown-ups in both parties who are mature enough to put aside the partisan bickering long enough to cut, cut, cut wasteful programs. They can start with the bloated highway bill passed this summer, gut it, and work out from there. They will also need to take a look at the Stafford Act and its payout structure for disaster relief. There will be countless opportunities to streamline the reconstruction and cut waste in government. Congress and the President should work together to make the most of the opportunities and deal with the setbacks as they inevitably will come.

The President provided solid leadership tonight. He provided a path to get the hurricane zone rebuilt and vibrant again. It's not a perfect plan, and we can honestly debate the merits of this or that aspect without descending into the usual strife. Or we can retreat to our respective armed political camps, cowboy up and get ready for an apocalyptic brawl.

I expect the latter but hope for the former.

UPDATE: Sometimes the MSM just can't catch a break. (Video clip of the attempted Bush-bashing here too. Looks like the full video isn't available.)

CHAVEZ DOUBLE STANDARD

Thor Halvorssen wonders why Pat Robertson and Hugo Chavez get such different treatment by the US media when they have essentially done the same thing: Call for the death of a head of state.

As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hit town for this week's special U.N. session, Chavez's flunkies were renting buses and offering to reimburse activists willing to create a "spontaneous" welcome crowd for the populist anti-American.

---

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, has been busy calling on the U.S. government to protect Chavez during his visit and to forbid remarks like those made by Pat Robertson on how the United States should neutralize the Chavez threat.

Full disclosure: Robertson's remarks came in conversation with me as a guest on his TV show, while discussing the deplorable human-rights situation in Venezuela.

And I'm still trying to figure out why Robertson caused a firestormm yet we hear no U.S. outrage over Chavez's own involvement in advocating violence against President Bush � let alone the Venezualan's past attempts to assassinate a president.

On Feb. 4, 1992, then-Lt.-Col. Chavez tried to assassinate Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez. Members of the years-long conspiracy had formally vowed to "kill the commander, if necessary" and to "wash the country's blemished honor with blood." Early that February morning, Chavez's rebel forces stormed the presidential palace, indiscriminately firing on loyalist soldiers and killing several dozen people.

Though the first family was in residence, the coup failed, and Chavez was court-martialed. Several months later, the imprisoned Chavez again plotted to murder Perez and to overthrow the government.

Then there's the Communist show trial of President Bush that Chavez sponsored in Venezuela in August:

Just last month, calls for President George Bush's death emanated from a Venezuelan government-funded conference �the 16th World Youth and Students Festival, Aug. 7-15, in which Chavez and His cabinet took an active part. (The "festival" is a communist gathering that in past decades had been hosted in Moscow, East Berlin, Havana and Pyonyang.)

Participants' political sympathies were obvious as the international delegates, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the image of Josef Stalin, networked in Caracas and discussed their respective struggles for communist revolution. Enormous portraits of Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh adorned the general meeting hall.

The multimillion-dollar extravaganza included an international tribunal, broadcast in Venezuela and Cuba. The presiding judge: Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel. Star witness for the prosecution: President Chavez. The accused: George W. Bush, charged with (among much else) being the cause of the world's terrorism. Delegates are on film chanting "Death to America" and holding signs that read, "Death to Bush."

Rep. John Conyers (D-Havana) presided over a similar Bush-hating dress-up court in Washington back in June.

In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.

They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.

Reds of a feather...

JUST GIVE US YOUR MONEY AND SHUT UP!

On protecting New Orleans from yet another catastrophe:

Talk about a massive new federal role in hurricane relief and reconstruction is already raising alarms among some state and local officials, who want to retain the say in rebuilding decisions _ a prerogative Bush thus far seems inclined to give them.

"I don't want anyone outside of New Orleans telling us how to plan this city," said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

And that would include FEMA right? And you're going to take care of this finally, right Mayor? And you'll address levee corruption too, correct?

UPDATE: Hands off of NOLA's money:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says some cities are trying to use Hurricane Katrina to grab federal aid even though they were not affected much by the storm.

Nagin said Thursday that New Orleans should get the bulk of the $100 billion or more he expects the federal government to spend rebuilding areas devastated by the storm and its related flooding.

"Maybe let a little bit go to the cities that were less affected," he said at a Baton Rouge news conference, without naming any of those cities.

As Nagin spoke, East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden was in Washington, D.C., to present federal officials with an $11.2 billion wish list for improvements ranging from roads to housing to help handle the massive influx of evacuees from the New Orleans area.

IT'S TELLING, ISN'T IT

that the sages at Editor & Publisher are far more interested in this photo than they ever were in this photo.

The first photo proves nothing more or less significant than that even the leader of the free world is human being.

The second photo proves nothing more or less significant than that the media's early line on Katrina was entirely wrong.

This is how bias works. Play up one thing, minimize or diminish another, in accordance with your whims and wishes. It's always a choice, and one usually made consciously.

(thanks to Dave in Seattle)

THE NATIONAL GUARD DEALS WITH DRUGS AND DISASTERS

Reader Sally sent in this inspiring report from a National Guard officer involved in the NOLA relief effort.

For those of you I haven't had a chance to catch up with lately, I just moved a few weeks ago from flying the RC-26 in West Virginia to a staff tour as the Counterdrug Aviation Branch Chief at the National Guard Bureau in DC.

There used to be limited exposure given to some of the assets used by the National Guard in counterdrug operations. Now the veil of what your National Guard ( Air and Army) Counterdrug (CD) aircraft do has been lifted. Not only do they fight the war on drugs each day, but they are uniquely positioned to respond to any domestic crisis where life and limb are at stake. They don't just train to do missions when called upon, they actually have people out there doing the mission every day. This high state of readiness, the specialized equipment suite we carry, and strategic positioning throughout the country, allows us to be there almost instantly in times of need.

I just returned from a trip down to AL, New Orleans, and Houston, TX to check on the operations of our counterdrug assets. From the RC-26, I was able to witness the damage along the MS coast all the way into New Orleans. From the OH-58 flying low, and in the LAV's on the flooded streets of New Orleans, I was able to see first hand the extent of the destruction and ongoing flooding. The sights and smells will stick with me forever. The stench is strong even from the air while flying over, and driving through it in the LAV results in burning eyes and nostrils. The scale of damage can't be conveyed through pictures or video. There is much more to tell, and I've got some really amazing photos, but I can't do it justice. The damage is overpowering for miles and miles from MS all the way through New Orleans.

There are areas where anyone who remained had no chance. Not FEMA, the President, nor the Governor could help the people that didn't leave some of those areas. Do not be surprised when the death toll rises dramatically as the waters recede and the focus shifts to from live to dead recovery as areas can be accessed to be cleared. I see the numbers increased a lot today and that trend will continue.

Below is a link to one of the recent news articles about the RC-26 activities in support of hurricane relief. Be sure to click on the video link to watch the clip. They really did a nice job capturing what we are all about. We also have OH-58 RAID helicopters deeply involved in the relief efforts doing similar missions.

In spite of the inaction depicted on the news, you should know the RC-26 provided high resolution photos detailing the beginnings of the levee breaches to the Army Corps of Engineers the day after the hurricane hit. Assets from many states began moving that way as soon as the weather allowed.

The RAID helicopters provided top cover to the SWAT teams and the LAV's as they cleared snipers from buildings. The RC-26 did the same for ATF Special Response Teams. Both used their infrared sensors to identify people at night and directed rescue teams to them. The RC-26 used it's 85 megapixel digital camera to provide critical and timely information needed to plan routes into and out of flooded areas to remove stranded VA Hospital patients, deliver food and water, determine which areas of the levees needed repair, and which areas would be suitable to set up tent cities and landing sites for support aircraft.

The daylight camera and video capture was used to conduct assessments of power substations to speed the return of electricity, check and confirm chemical leaks, and just two days ago found the cause of why the waters were starting to rise again in some areas. (The water is bubbling up about a half a mile inside the levee due to some subterranean hydraulic action).

In addition to the aviation assets listed here, the CD LAV's have been engaged for well over a week rescuing people. As recently as two days ago they were still rescuing people. Many of these were deaf and blind people that did not hear previous rescuers calling for them or could not navigate their way out of the building quick enough to be seen in previous attempts.

These LAV crew members have been shot at multiple times and they have been in the caustic and diseased water too many times. It is stressful and demoralizing to deal with decomposing bodies, and being shot at in your own country, but these LAV crews are still motivated to help. You can really be proud of your National Guard, Army and Air, and you should be aware of the capability they bring to the table inside your country for disaster response.

Here's the clip he mentions.

Here's a story about the National Guard using the RC-26B in counterdrug operations.

One angle of the NOLA meltdown that I haven't seen mentioned too many places outside this blog, and we haven't mentioned it lately, is the role that drug addiction probably played in Katrina's aftermath. Hospitals came under fire from gangs of "looters" for three reasons--they had no protection, they had stores of food, and probably most importantly they had stores of drugs. When the city melted down, one side effect was that the flood also washed away addicts' drug networks. They needed a fix, and there was no law enforcement regime to stop them from getting that fix however they might. Addiction is not tolerant of disaster scenarios--it's a physical craving that can be temporarily sated but must eventually be fed. So they attacked hospitals and increasingly anything else that game within range. Libertarian advocates of drug legalization would do well to think about what NOLA's rapid meltdown might say about their ideas.

BAD START IN GAZA

The Washington Post feigns shock that a culture founded on terrorism would bring chaos wherever it goes:

ONLY DAYS after the final withdrawal of Israeli forces, the Gaza Strip is on the verge of anarchy. Despite promises to impose law and order, the Palestinian Authority has allowed mobs of looters and armed extremists to rampage through former Jewish settlements, where they have burned or bulldozed synagogues left standing by Israel. Many of the valuable greenhouses that, with the generous help of international donors, were saved for use by the Palestinians have been stripped of equipment as police stood by and watched. Despite a formal agreement with Israel to maintain security, Egypt has allowed thousands of Palestinians to illegally cross its border, including rifle-brandishing militants. If it is not quickly checked, the disorder will destroy Palestinian hopes that the Gaza transfer will become a step toward statehood.

Gaza will be al Qaeda's point of entry into Israel. Egypt and the hapless Palestinian Authority will allow it to happen. There will soon be al Qaeda training camps in Gaza. The work of Afghanistan--destroying al Qaeda's home base--could be undone within weeks. This will obviously have negative effects on the war against al Qaeda in Iraq going on not too far away.

It's not surprising that terror and anarchy went with the Palestinians into formerly occupied Gaza--their ambitions for statehood rest on a foundation of decades of terrorism. It's surprising that the press is so far reporting on the Gaza anarchy with some degree of honesty. It will be surprising if that continues for very long.

MORE: Arms smuggling into Gaza is surging:

Israeli military sources said hundreds of weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank rockets and bomb components, have been smuggled over the last three days from the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip.

The sources said Palestinian insurgents brought the equipment from Egypt in wake of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

So far, more than 10,000 Palestinians have crossed the Gaza border and made their way to towns in eastern and northern Sinai. The sources said they included hundreds of operatives from Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, some of whom directed the flow of Palestinians into Sinai.

Now why would these nice people need all those nasty weapons?

UPDATE: Some Palestinians foresaw the chaos that Israeli withdrawal would leave behind:

"We know once Israel leaves, Hamas is in power. A lot of the Palestinians in Gaza are really upset about this because life won't be good for us," said Mahmoud.

With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza evacuation plan drawing closer, and Hamas swiftly gaining power in the area, analysts have pointed to worrying signs the terror group will use its gains to impose a Taliban-like Islamist regime on the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas recently banned an open-air music and dance festival, saying it was against Islam. Israeli sources say Hamas has established its own hard-line Islamic court system in Gaza that is being used in the place of the Palestinian Authority's official judicial system.

There have been reports of a Hamas Anti-Corruption Unit, described by intelligence sources as a kind of "morality police," enforcing hard-line Islamic rules on local residents. The Unit recently carried out a high-profile "honor killing" of a woman it suspected of committing adultery.

"We are treated much better in Israel than by Palestinians in charge," said Saed.

That Hamas Taliban-like regime will soon become the Taliban's actual successor. It will become one of the most repressive quasi-states in the world, and it will host al Qaeda forces.

And we won't be able to do a thing about it. Unless we plan on invading Gaza.

The "roadmap to peace" will have led to the creation of a brand new terrorist state.

ONE LAST THOUGHT: From Iran:

Iran is willing to provide other Islamic nations with nuclear technology, Iran's hard-line president said Thursday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comments after meeting Turkey's prime minister on the sidelines of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Ahmadinejad repeated promises that Iran will not pursue nuclear weapons, IRNA reported. Then he added: "Iran is ready to transfer nuclear know-how to the Islamic countries due to their need."

Does the PA count as an "Islamic country?"

HURRICANE SPIN

The New York Times is nothing if not reflexively leftist. It's trotting out a new anti-Bush line, made up out of thin air, to breathe a little new life into the left's latest media jihad against the Bush administration.

And yes, jihad is a perfectly fair description of what's going on. They're waging a war based on their religious zeal. Its aim is to destroy the Bush presidency. It's based in part on conspiracy theories, in part on rumors, and in part on a willed misunderstanding of our federal system. It's a jihad.

Today the Times has former FEMA Director Michael Brown's take on the Katrina aftermath. Brown is of the opinion that the problems encountered in NOLA had everything to do with the incompetence of the local officials, city and state:

Hours after Hurricane Katrina passed New Orleans on Aug. 29, as the scale of the catastrophe became clear, Michael D. Brown recalls, he placed frantic calls to his boss, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and to the office of the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr.

Mr. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he told the officials in Washington that the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and her staff were proving incapable of organizing a coherent state effort and that his field officers in the city were reporting an "out of control" situation.

"I am having a horrible time," Mr. Brown said he told Mr. Chertoff and a White House official - either Mr. Card or his deputy, Joe Hagin - in a status report that evening. "I can't get a unified command established."

By the time of that call, he added, "I was beginning to realize things were going to hell in a handbasket" in Louisiana. A day later, Mr. Brown said, he asked the White House to take over the response effort.

He said he felt the subsequent appointment of Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honor� of the Army as the Pentagon's commander of active-duty forces began to turn the situation around.

Note that Brown is placing responsibility at the state and local level in the second graph. The Times follows the above with this:

In his first extensive interview since resigning as FEMA director on Monday under intense criticism, Mr. Brown declined to blame President Bush or the White House for his removal or for the flawed response.

It's reasonable to assume that Brown declined to blame the White House because the Times tried to get him to do just that. Anyway--

The Times tale recounts a series of details showing that the state and local storm response was a mess:

By Saturday afternoon, many residents were leaving. But as the hurricane approached early on Sunday, Mr. Brown said he grew so frustrated with the failure of local authorities to make the evacuation mandatory that he asked Mr. Bush for help.

"Would you please call the mayor and tell him to ask people to evacuate?" Mr. Brown said he asked Mr. Bush in a phone call.

"Mike, you want me to call the mayor?" the president responded in surprise, Mr. Brown said. Moments later, apparently on his own, the mayor, C. Ray Nagin, held a news conference to announce a mandatory evacuation, but it was too late, Mr. Brown said. Plans said it would take at least 72 hours to get everyone out.

When he arrived in Baton Rouge on Sunday evening, Mr. Brown said, he was concerned about the lack of coordinated response from Governor Blanco and Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard.

"What do you need? Help me help you," Mr. Brown said he asked them. "The response was like, 'Let us find out,' and then I never received specific requests for specific things that needed doing."

Granted, this is Brown's view of things, but it lines up well with the details that have been emerging over the past couple of weeks now. Blanco needed 24 hours to make simple decisions, she kept relief organizations out of the city, and Nagin seems to have decided to wing it once disaster struck. So how does the Times choose to handle this? If you guessed "blame Bush," you win:

Mr. Brown's version of events raises questions about whether the White House and Mr. Chertoff acted aggressively enough in the response. New Orleans convulsed in looting and violence after the hurricane, and troops did not arrive in force to restore order until five days later.

That's one very narrow response to Brown's take. A broader and more accurate reading would be that the local officials were inept, were incapable of giving Brown even the most basic logistical support or itemized lists of things they needed (which is their job), and finger-pointed after the fact when it became clear that their own disaster plans fell far short of the mark, and that for the most part the local officials didn't even follow what plans they did have.

But this spin is going to emerge as the new left line. Bush will be cast as having failed because those "below him" failed, even though those who failed aren't part of the administration and are not his subordinates. They're an elected executive of a sovereign state and of a large city, respectively--they don't answer to Bush because that's how our system works. It's funny how the left has been calling Bush a dictator for years, yet are now slamming him for failing to act like a dictator and push the entire Constitution aside.

But that won't matter to the left. They don't get federalism, or if they do they conveniently forget it at times like these. That's the willed misunderstanding. We've seen it emerge in comments on a couple of posts on this blog, and soon enough it will probably be the dominant left line on the storm. It's quite convenient, since it allows for Nagin and Blanco to assume responsibility for their failures, as they have done, while maintaining an angle to attack Bush and cast the local failures on him.

Who cares about a little thing like the Constitution when there's an opportunity to blame Bush?

(via Right Wing News, who has more to say on the subject)

MORE: Different takes from Rick Moran and Michelle Malkin. I wrote this post more as an examination of the Times' spin angle than of Brown's defense, which I agree betrays more than a few weaknesses in his performance, mostly because I've seen the spin in this article show up here where I've had to combat it directly. And I do expect it to become the left's next line of attack, its other lines having failed so far.

But I will take some issue with this comment:

"I am having a horrible time," Mr. Brown said he told Mr. Chertoff and a White House official - either Mr. Card or his deputy, Joe Hagin - in a status report that evening. "I can't get a unified command established."

Establishing that command was his job. FEMA's role, after all, is to coordinate disaster relief efforts. The agency has few resources of its own because it's supposed to provide what amounts to supervisory oversight. Brown simply lacked the leadership to do that. Perhaps it was his lack of experience, or perhaps it was his personality, but Brown clearly was ill-suited for his job.

Coordination and command are not the same thing. FEMA doesn't promise to arrive on the scene of a disaster for 72-96 hours. Are the local officials just supposed to sit on their hands until FEMA arrives, even if it takes four days?

No, they're not. When FEMA arrives, it is supposed to help the local/state disaster corps get what they need from the federal government and from states unaffected by the disaster. States are sovereign entities, and disasters don't change that fact. It was not as far as I can tell Brown's job to establish the unified command. It was NOLA authorities' and Louisiana authorities' job to establish command and then tell FEMA what they needed, where and when. They are supposed to have a greater understanding of the peculiar needs of their locales than the feds. Brown was supposed to augment the command by connecting it to the federal disaster relief capabilities. I don't think he did a good job of that, but I also don't think it's fair to lay the entire command failure at his feet. The city melted down very much on its own as FEMA was on its way to help. Blanco was feeding both the feds and Nagin several lines of grade A bull throughout the crisis, always with an eye to her own political standing and her lawyers' opinions. How was Brown supposed to establish a unified command when Blanco kept standing in the way of anyone doing just that?

It's clear by now that Brown's leadership skills are wanting, to say the least. But I think it's become common to misunderstand exactly what FEMA is and isn't supposed to do in a crisis. It doesn't push aside state and local governments and relieve them of their responsibilities. And before Katrina, FEMA hadn't had to deal with an evaporating local and state government that was actively encouraging lawlessness. I'm sure it will add that possibility into its future planning and training scenarios.

YOU HAVE BEEN HEARD

Michelle Malkin is reporting that Crescent of Jihad Embrace will be altered. The National Park Service and the Crescent's architects are responding to your feedback.

A reader has a suggestion for the architects to consider:

The most important elements that serve to memorialize the actions of those on that flight ARE THEIR OWN WORDS WHICH THEY CHOSE AS THEIR OWN MEMORIAL!

� They didn�t survive�let�s let their chosen words live! Etch their words in granite at the top of a set of steps (equal to the number of passengers)!

� Just look how well the Psalm they chose reflects both their actions and the location of their heroism.

� For each of the geographic images below (pastures, waters, paths, valley) you could have a walk-through memorial honoring other such acts of heroism in our history that also took place in Pennsylvania (Valley Forge, The birth of our Constitution and Declaration, Gettysburg)

� If you want to avoid controversy over the separation of church and state, just let �He� in the following also stand for �America� or �Freedom�

o [The Love of Freedom] maketh me to lie down
In green pastures

o [The Love of Freedom] leadeth me
Beside the still waters

o [The Love of Freedom] leadeth me in the paths
Of righteousness

o Yea, though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil

o Thou preparest a table before me
In the presence of mine enemies

o Thou anointest my head with oil . . . and so I accept this (anointed) mission:

o Let�s Roll

Works for me. And from the air, should any would-be hijacker ever fly over the monument, he should see "LET"S ROLL" staring back at him in big, bold letters. Make the letters out of trees, granite, or just rocks like the Nazca lines, whatever works best and will last a long time.

But those two words should be shouted to the sky.