The administration claims it did not receive advance appeals from Louisiana officials for Federal assistance. We know that is a lie, Governor Blanco requested such assistance on August 28, citing the fears of widespread damage from the approaching hurricane.
The administration, as part of its DHS program, has been working to get complete control over the rescue effort, insisting that local officials should cede authority to the Federal government. This has been resisted by local officials.
Which is why we have to wonder why there were so many reports of insurgency in New Orleans, and armed marauders threatening the rescue effort. (And why the former, Republican governor was so readily available with Talking Points criticism of the present officials). There is a federal regulation allowing Bush to take over, under the Insurgency Act. Were we manipulated?
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The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,"
said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
While the Administration and the Fed's appeared to be doing nothing, and the president seemed oblivious, it appears they were setting the stage for showing how "useless" the local Democrats were in planning for and preventing the fall-out of the storm.
The other day, president Bush jetted into town, for carefully prepared photo-ops that have been shown to be sham rescue efforts (the fake levee repair, and the faked handing out of rescue packages - both dismantled once the president left).
However, Bush has legal authority to take over, if it can be shown that local government is inadequate to the task, and if there are civil disturbances.
Here, it's interesting how Mike Foster, the previous Republican governor, came on the scene with criticism of the failure of Nagin and Blanco to quell civil unrest in the city.
Subsequently, senior administration officials used this "fact" to support the belief that local officials were incapable of handling the situation.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
As we know, the last point is a direct and blatant lie, easily disproved with the documents filed by Blanco. However, what matters now to this Rovian administration is the impressions they can create, and the spin they can achieve, in order to frame Bush as the savior against a local government gone wild.
Blanco's August 28 request for a declaration of a Federal Disaster
Yesterday, we could listen to DHS head Chertoff lying at gale force in pretending he couldn't foresee the breaking of the levees. Barring Memphis Minnie having foreseen it back in 1929, in her famous song, New Orleans and Louisiana officials have been running around "with their hair on fire" for years, trying to get the Bush administration to understand what was at stake.
Fortunately, Chertoff's lame attempt at spin isn't working. Even CNN blasted him, point for point, with damning rebuttals of his statements.
But - did the administration engineer a hyping of the reports on riots, marauding gangs and lawlessness, in order to be able to take authority away from an "ineffective, local Democratic" administration?