The National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force. . . .
"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters in Washington.
"Once that assessment was made ... then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theatre."
Now, let me get this straight -- The commander of our forces thought the New Orleans police would be able to handle the situation when:
1. Policemen are just as vulnerable to being killed or injured by storms and floods as anyone else.
2. You have 1700 police to take care of 100,000 people who were stuck in the city.
3. Communications were down, which should have been expected in the aftermath of the storm.
4. Even if they arrested anyone, they had no way of getting them into jail. The only thing they could have done was shoot people in the streets, and since gun stores were among the first places looted, they were quickly outgunned.
5. The police didn't have any more access to food and water than anybody else trying to survive in that city.
6. Police are human beings who have their own families to worry about.
And they thought the New Orleans police force *wouldn't* disintegrate?
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