Determine why soldiers weren't deployed earlier

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says his city turned a corner toward recovery from Hurricane Katrina when Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore arrived last Friday along with thousands of active-duty troops.

By the time the weekend was over, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division from North Carolina, the 1st Cavalry Division from Texas and Marines from the Marine Expeditionary Forces in California and North Carolina had evacuated the Superdome and convention center, removed patients trapped in flooded hospitals, rehabilitated the airport and rescued hundreds of residents from their homes. The impact of the active-duty troops makes it clear that much suffering in New Orleans could have been averted had those forces been deployed sooner. Why did it take nearly five days for the cavalry to arrive?

The first response of FEMA and the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama was to muster National Guard units from across the region. The large numbers of Guard members serving in Iraq -- more than 7,000 from Louisiana and Mississippi alone -- depleted the nearest available forces and vital equipment such as generators and high-wheeled vehicles. Emergency managers had to deal with an unprecedented disaster by patching together units of citizen soldiers with various capabilities and few working relationships with each other. When the active-duty troops finally arrived, they brought cohesive units that overnight could deliver the whole package: helicopters, trucks, fuel, field hospitals and kitchens, communication networks and established lines of command and control. More than 17,000 active-duty troops have been deployed throughout the Gulf Coast, and their contributions have drawn universal and deserved praise.

Part of the hesitance to call in the Army stems from misunderstanding of the 1878 law called Posse Comitatus ("power of the county") which bars active-duty military from taking on law-enforcement activities within the United States. The law was intended to prohibit U.S. troops from supervising elections in the former Confederate states but has evolved into a needless impediment to federal-state cooperation.

In fact, presidents can waive the law during emergencies -- President Clinton did after the Oklahoma City bombing; the first President Bush sent in the Army after Hurricane Andrew; President Nixon used federal troops to replace striking postal workers in 1970 -- and Congress revised it to allow the military to help the Coast Guard with drug interdiction. Congress also amended it after 9/11 so troops could guard borders against terrorists. Since active-duty troops deployed for Katrina had humanitarian relief assignments, not law enforcement like police and the National Guard, the law doesn't apply anyway.

With a brief telephone conversation, President Bush and the governors could have brought federal troops in immediately after the hurricane passed to save many lives. Americans need to know why they did not, so it doesn't happen again.