Commander: Military Role in Relief Swells

WASHINGTON -- More active-duty troops are joining the Hurricane Katrina relief effort than originally planned, and a senior commander said Monday they likely will be needed for months, not weeks.
....
Thus the total for active-duty ground forces would be about 8,500, up from the 7,200 announced on Saturday.
....
Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. Northern Command which is responsible for military support to civilian authorities during domestic emergencies, told reporters at the Pentagon that in addition to the active-duty troops, there are about 38,000 National Guard troops in Louisiana and Mississippi. As commanders arrive on the scene of the disaster, some are requesting additional support from their home bases, he said.

"I'm not surprised the numbers are swelling just a little bit," Keating said in a telephone interview from his headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. He said he had toured the devastation with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Sunday.

Keating acknowledged that the federal response to Katrina could have been better, and he said there would be a post-disaster analysis to draw lessons from the experience......

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090500470.html

fire the incompetents.

In Pennsylvania Rumsfeld tried to "dissolve the Pennsylvania Air National Guard division without the Governor's authority". (Ass Press) The move was a conspicuous attempt to undermine homeland defenses and put more power under the direct control of the Defense Dept. Rumsfeld also tried to "transfer" all 15 "Pacific Northwest and Oregon National Guard fighter jets that patrolled Seattle's skies after 9-11"; leaving the region with no protection from aerial assault. (Northwest's F-15's Should Stay Put" Seattle PI staff, 8-27-05) Consider the risk to a "target-rich" area like the Pacific Northwest, with its industry, harbors and nuclear power plants, if it was stripped of its first line of defense? Rumsfeld's behavior has been the same everywhere across the country. He is determined to undermine the National Guard and limit the states' ability to protect themselves against attack. His intention is to smash America's internal defenses, which are under control of the states' governors, and introduce the military into homeland security. It is a clear attempt to centralize authority and further militarize the country. By weakening America's defenses, Rumsfeld has paved the way for deploying troops and aircraft within the country and setting the precedent for a permanent military presence within the nation. It is one giant step towards direct military rule.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WHI20050831&articleId=892

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.  Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.  One day it is over his head."