BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Congress ought to consider giving the U.S. military the lead role in responding to natural disasters, as he heard one general describe the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort as a "train wreck."
Bush spent the last three days monitoring Hurricane Rita's high winds and flooding from military bases and emergency centers in Colorado, Texas and Louisiana. The president, whose poll numbers have slumped to new lows, was widely criticized over the slow federal response to Katrina.
Bush said Congress would have to consider under what circumstance the Department of Defense should become the lead agency in coordinating and responding to a disaster.
"Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case. But is there a natural disaster ... of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort? That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about," Bush said.
McClellan said Bush's goal was to make sure "there's a very clear line of authority" in the event of another major catastrophe, whether it is another storm like Katrina or an avian flu outbreak.
"You need to mobilize assets and resources and logistics and communications very quickly to help stabilize or contain the situation," McClellan said. "The organization, in the president's mind, that has the capability to do that is the Department of Defense."
McClellan said Bush has already discussed some of these issues with the secretary of Homeland Security and some top military leaders, and that the next step was to hold talks with congressional leaders.
McClellan acknowledged the proposal faced legal hurdles, and that a major issue would be determining what type of disaster would "trigger" a shift in authority to the Pentagon.
Putting the military in the lead role would sideline the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, which now works with local and state officials to coordinate disaster response.
This is how you maintain complete control over the dissimulation of information to the American public regarding events surrounding a disaster--you give it to the military. By gutting FEMA and giving control of disaster planning and execution to the Pentagon, the White House will then have a free pass in crafting a public relations campaign for future disasters. This will not do anything in helping American citizens who are affected by the disasters. Having the Pentagon control disaster planning takes away the state and local government's ability to respond to such disasters. The problem here is that the Pentagon has no experience in disaster response at a local level--they are not the first authorities at the scene. State and local police, fire and medical officials are the first authorities at the scene of a disaster and will have the immediate first-hand information on getting recovery and relief procedures started. They know what are the hardest areas hit, where the casualties are, and where to send the relief to the hardest hit areas because they know their cities and towns--not some nameless bureaucrat sitting in the Pentagon. The Defense Department's main asset is the ability to move tremendous resources--both men and supplies--into an area after a disaster has occurred. The Pentagon can certainly make plans for shifting military assets from bases located in the various states towards certain geographic areas where disasters may occur, but once those resources are in the disaster area, there has to be some type of coordination between the state authorities (who will have the first-hand knowledge of what needs to be done) and the military (who has the muscle to do things). And that is what FEMA was originally designed for. The simple reason why FEMA screwed up in response to Katrina was that the top officials in charge of FEMA were not qualified for those positions. They were selected by the Bush Administration due to politics, or political favors.
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