Katrina Coverage

The Defense Dep't commissioned an "independent and critical review" of the response to Katrina to be conducted by "Stephen Henthorne, a former professor of the US Army's War College and an adviser to the Pentagon who was a deputy-director in the Louisiana relief efforts."

The Independent UK says it's seen a copy of the report:

It charts how "corruption and mismanagement within the New Orleans city government" had "diverted money earmarked for improving flood protection to other, more vote-getting, projects. Past mayors and governors gambled that the long-expected Big Killer hurricane would never happen. That bet was lost with Hurricane Katrina."

The report concludes that although the US military did a good job in carrying out emergency missions, there were some serious shortcomings.

The report states that Brigadier General Michael D Barbero, commander of the Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk, Louisiana, refused permission for special forces units who volunteered to join relief efforts, to do so. General Barbero also refused to release other troops.

"The same general did take in some families from Hurricane Katrina, but only military families living off the base," the report says. "He has done a similar thing for military families displaced by Hurricane Rita. However, he declined to share water with the citizens of Leesville, who are out of water, and his civil affairs staff have to sneak off post in civilian clothes to help coordinate relief efforts." The report says deployment in the Iraq war led to serious problems. "Another major factor in the delayed response to the hurricane aftermath was that the bulk of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was deployed in Iraq.

"Even though all the states have 'compacts' with each other, pledging to come to the aid of other states, it takes time, money and effort to activate and deploy National Guard troops from other states to fill in"…

Then, it goes on to advise against the plan of Bush and others to weaken Posse Comitatus.

However, according to this:

This statement is not supported by the facts. 3,000 of 11,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard and 4,000 of 13,000 members of the Mississippi National Guard were deployed to Iraq, leaving more than 17,000 National Guardsmen for hurricane relief efforts. This does not constitute the "bulk" of troops as they said the report stated.

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