Politics delayed troops dispatch to N.O.

Robert Travis Scott of The Times-Picayune writes:

The 82nd Airborne is "trained to deploy anywhere, at any time, to fight upon arrival and to win," according to the mission statement of the famous Army division based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

It's a force capable of launching a strategic mission into any area of the world with 18 hours of notification, so the question for many people is why it took President Bush five days to order the 82nd on the ground to deal with the lawlessness and human suffering that spread across New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.

The reason? Easy, Bush wanted to make himself look good and blanco wouldn't let it. I side with Blanco either way.

Was Gov. Kathleen Blanco too flustered and overwhelmed by the situation to communicate effectively with President Bush? Or was the White House more focused on political maneuvering than helping the citizens of New Orleans?

Blanco will face the controversy on a national stage Wednesday when she testifies before a congressional committee investigating the government's preparation and response to Katrina. Her appearance is preceded by her administration's recent release of thousands of documents, including e-mail messages, reports and hand-scribbled notes, that were requested by House and Senate panels.

In her 16-page overview of those documents, no topicconsumes the governor more than the policy decision of bringing federal troops such as the 82nd Airborne into New Orleans to supplement National Guard units.

The documents show that the White House delayed its decision to deploy federal troops while it pressured the nation's senior National Guard official to persuade Blanco to accept the president's hand-picked commander to run the entire response effort.

The records also reveal a Democratic administration in Baton Rouge seized with anxiety that the media, swayed by a Republican spin machine, would make it appear that the relief effort would improve overnight if the president took control, and that Blanco was dragging her feet to invite federal help.

"The (White House) spin is that this (is) state and local fault," Blanco Chief of Staff Andy Kopplin e-mailed to Blanco's top aides on Sept. 4.

Any paranoia that Blanco officials might have had about a GOP agenda was fed by phone calls and e-mail messages from national media and other sources. For example, an ABC News reporter wrote Blanco's press secretary, "2 senior GOP aides have called me to suggest we should be focusing more blame on Governor Blanco." A New York Times reporter wrote an e-mail message saying, "Several officials in Washington are asserting that the Federal Government should have assumed control of the overall operation . . . As it would have meant, they suggested, better coordination of the response."

GOP spin just to make the democrats look bad. People were hurt and suffering and all the GOP could think about was how to make themselves look better and the Democrats to look worse.

Link to full article is here:
Politics delayed troops dispatch to N.O.