” MILITARY RESCUE EFFORTS COMING TO END ALONG GULF COAST; 4,000 active-duty personnel, 2 large Navy vessels and 36 helicopters ordered into the relief effort will return to regular duties…. Developing… “

It’s laughable to believe that 4000 active duty personnel, 2 large Naval ships and 36 helicopters used in the Hurricane rescue and relief effort would so weaken our armed forces that we would be incapable of fighting the war in Iraq and helping the Hurricane victims at the same time. Yet all weeklong I’ve heard nothing but how the war in Iraq has weakened our ability to do both. Please Lib’s don’t let the facts get in the way. We have had several Hurricanes since the war in Iraq begun and we have had no problems with them until now. Why? Because this is one of the first that has been politicized by the left. Why because they see poor blacks in New Orleans and seized on an opportunity to further exploit the very Blacks that their ideas have led into Poverty in the first place. The response with hurricane Katrina was actually faster than many past hurricanes. For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.
I do believe this one should be singled out and analyzed, but not because of the response of FEMA but for the inept and complete failure of the local city and State governments of Louisiana to do their part in preparing for the Hurricane.

Here are a few quotes from a former Air Force logistics officer who had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought: This info was taken from an article by Jack Kelly of the Post-Gazette .com Opinion dated 9/14/05. Read it here:( http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05254/568876.stm)

“You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by propositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.”

“Guardsmen need to receive mobilization orders; report to their armories; draw equipment; receive orders and convoy to the disaster area. Guardsmen driving down from Pennsylvania or Navy ships sailing from Norfolk can’t be on the scene immediately.
Relief efforts must be planned. Other than propositioning supplies near the area likely to be afflicted (which was done quite efficiently), this cannot be done until the hurricane has struck and a damage assessment can be made. There must be a route reconnaissance to determine if roads are open, and bridges along the way can bear the weight of heavily laden trucks.”

At the end of the day the real reasons for the failures in New Orleans have to be pointed at the real cause of the disaster if we hope to never see our fellow citizens in this situation again. It’s not FEMA but the local people whose first responsibility is to their own state.

Comment by Ryan Neat, Loser

Translation: “The reality is we have few available troops and regarless of the number we actually have it’s irrelevent if I say so.”

Why do you people let him get away with this brainless tripe? Nevermind.

AS for the national guard and disasters, as you can see from the progress made in New Orleans, our National Guard are doing just fine. In the last week the City is being Drained faster than expected, over 32,000 people have been rescued, the Levies are plugged and much, much more. The problem is that libs are always angry when things go right when it’a a Conservative running the operation. So much so that their emotions go haywire and they can’t think logically. You guys hate bush and republicans so much that all you see is negative, negative, negative. You’re never happy , you’re always miserable. I feel sorry for you Ryan. Your liberal ideas are going down in flames because they are being rejected by most of the people of this Great Country. What you don’t understand is that I was a lib once. So I know how you guys think and I know why you are failing. Dems and the so called Black Leadership in this Country like the Jesse Jacksons and so on, have sold Black people out. They care more about the Dems that their own people. If they were intellectually honest they would at least listen to other ideas on Race and provery. Instead they fall lock step with the Dems and keep telling poor Blacks that it’s not their fault they are poor, it’s the WHite man. Funny how those White men never include White Democrats, only White Republicans. But it’s been the Dems who have run New Orleans the last 50 odd years. You can’t escape from that fact Ryan as much as you try to deny it. There are two kinds of Liberals. Those who know that their ideas don’t work, but get rewarded for spreading the lies thru money and power. And those like you Ryan who actually believe they can work. Ignorance is bliss. AS for the reciept for being a Republican; I have it framed on the wall as a testement to my awakening. God Bless you Ryan

That’s sort of the point of having state Guard and Reserve units. They’re already so close by (along with their toys, as Ryan said) that you can get them anywhere in the state you need them within a matter of hours.

And, rather than using those toys to move troops, they can be used to bring out refugees and bring in supplies.

It’s not hard to see how having those designated, trained first responders at home and ready to roll cost precious time. Scrounging up troops from far yonder and getting them on site diverted valuable equipment that might have been used for evacuation and supplies. The time it took them to get there used up critical hours in the early stages of the disaster, when it might have made all the difference to thousands.

Blum said it may have cost as much as a day. Not hard to imagine at all.

Part of the reason they couldn’t move those troops fast enough is that the equipment was in iraq. When they deployed the national guard, their toys went with them. That was part of the point the general made – please read the discussions on this topic, it’s pretty well understood it is both a troop and equipment issue, just as it is in iraq. Heck they don’t even have enough equipment in iraq itself, even with its priority… These are cheap stingy republicans, they don’t spend on anything they aren’t forced to…

I’m well willing to consider facts. I’d just like to see some. Lt. Gen. Blum says hat “arguably” a day or so of response time was lost due to the absense of La. and Ms. NG units. OK, what exactly does that mean? The fact that the word “arguably” was included in his statement means that one could make an argument for the case but also against it. Had he said, “definitely” that would be a whole different matter but the use of “arguably” shows that even Lt. Gen. Blum thinks the case is ambiguous.

Gone at Last makes the argument that had we not been in Iraq 1200 soldiers (not Marines) could have been deployed rather than the 800 I referenced. Sorry, but I don’t think that could have been the case. My friend told me that they were shoving soldiers in as fast as they could. The problem was a lack of ability to transport them to the areas they needed to be. When I spoke to him they were flying c-130s to Baton Rouge and then taking helicoptors from there to the NO airport. Does anyone want to guess at how many loads it takes to transport 800 soldiers (plus equipment, plus supplies) by helicopter?

Lastly, to address the point that, “The line of causality between Iraq and the inadequate emergency response in Louisiana is direct and obvious. Only an ideologue could argue otherwise.” I must be an ideologue but I cannot understand why our presence in Iraq would have caused the Governor of La. to order relief supplies to be blockaded out of New Orleans or why being in Iraq caused local law enforcement to close the bridge between New Oleans and Gretna. For that matter, what about Iraq caused the city of New Oleans to disregard its own publised evacuation plan? All of these things contributed to the inadequacy of the response. I do not claim that they were the only problems, but surely 1) not evacuating those with no means, 2) blocking escape routes and 3) keeping food and water out were major contributors to the unnecessary misery those most helpless had to endure.

Because it’s a fact – but CONservatives like you tend not to care for those. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that “arguably” a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard’s 155th Brigade Combat Team and Louisiana’s 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq.

Get your facts straight, you’re wrong, wrong, wrong and WRONG!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005Z.shtml

The National Guard are THE designated first responders. The governor can call on them instantly, without any federal involvement at all. You cannot dispute that, because of Iraq, the front-line forces assigned primary responsibility for securing New Orleans were indeed spread way too thin to do the job required.

Of course, even at full strength, they’d have needed backup for a disaster of this magnitude. For that, they turn to the Guards in neighboring states — which, in this case, were also depleted and under-equipped because of Iraq.

The fact that you know a few of the people who *could* show up is anecdotal. It’s great that 800 Marines came — but absent Iraq, it would have more likely been 1200 Marines instead (because, at any given time, we’ve got one-third of them over there, too). And that would have been 50% better.

The line of causality between Iraq and the inadequate emergency response in Louisiana is direct and obvious. Only an ideologue could argue otherwise.

Sorry Ryan. The map on the page you reference is misleading at best, although technically correct. Many of the coutries shown as having a US military troop presence are places where the military presence consists of the military ataches and Marine embassy guards. I hardly think those deployments are “enterprises of empire”.

If we are spread too thin then just how was it that the USS Bataan was on the scene in less than 48 hours conducting search and rescue, with two self contained hospital teams placed ashore? For that matter, I am friends with a M/Sgt who on Tuesday after the storm hit was helping deploy an force of 800 drawn from his division. How could they scrape up that many men in just a few days if we were “spread too thin”?

The assertions of many is that we are spread to thin because of Iraq, so in my original post I asked for others to tell me what percent of our forces were tied up there. The fact that practically no one even offered a guess tells me that no one actually knew, although the answer is easy to obtain. Perhaps our military forces are spread too thin. That is certainly a possibility. But so far all I have heard is an assertion. I’d like to see some actual evidence.

We use logic just fine. The bush admin cuts the government revenue, starts a costly war, takes national guard troops which are supposed to handle natural disasters and uses them as international soldiers, and then because we have an all volunteer army, these poor white, latino and black kids don’t want to sign up to die in iraq. And this is why everyone is saying the national guard is ill prepared – and it is a ‘logical’ reason. Is that clear to you, or would you like for me to give you some more logic?

As for what democrats did? Probably not enough for new orleans, but a HECK of a lot more than the republicans did. Republicans in the last 30 years have continually cut back school, social services and even destroyed job opportunities. The continued mismanagement of the economy by 6 republican presidents in the last 50 years have reduced the average adjusted working wage to an alltime low for that period. You can no longer live on minimum wage, and the republicans block all attempts to raise it. Even last week FEMA announced it wouldn’t pay works the louisiana minimum wage, and infact will pay the ridiculous federal wage. Schools are under funded, and republicans want to cut them further.

So while you might be able to complain about democrats – the real complaint isn’t that democrats have done nothings for new orleans, it’s that they haven’t done enough to stop the irresponsible and heartless republicans. And if you’re foolish enough to become one of them, then you’ve been sold a bill of goods and you better look in the bag to see if you still have the receipt!

The problem is that most of the DOD forces are in fact committed to other enterprises of empire.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2003/0710imperialmap.htm

The reality is that we have few ‘available’ troops – the actual amount is fairly irrelevant in this discussion.

Sorry, incorrect. I confess that it was a trick question. The correct answer is not one of the choices (unless you want to select “d”).

The actual strength of the U.S. military is roughly 2.6 million (http://www.dod.gov/pubs/dod101/). So with a generous estimate of 150,000 troops in Iraq, around 50,000 in Afganistan and 50,000 in Kuwaiit that yields a deployment of less than 10% of the total manpower strength in that part of the world. Even throwing in another 50,000 or so in other locations that provide support (for example, manning bases in Deigo Garcia) wouldn’t get the total up to 15%.

I guess I’m just one of the stupid sheeple or perhaps a reich-wing nut case but I find it hard to understand how deploying less than 15% of our total war-making force results in having that force “stread too thin”.

Does this mean the reaction to Katrina was the best it could have been or should have been? Of course not. However; arguments that the response would have been materially different had we not been “spread too thin” are specious at best.