An explanation of Posse Comitatus

(Again, another nice comment, but not my own):

Posse Comitatus. This is a law passed in 1878 that prevents federal troops from engaging in any law enforcement activities such as arresting criminals. Even now, because the National Guard units aren't federalised, they are the ones doing the arresting, not the federal troops.

It's a very complicated bit of nonsense. But it's also very clear that if President Bush had sent in federal troops, he would have done so in clear violation of the law.

And that would have set him up for impeachment because that could be an impeachable offense.

= = = =
Posse Comitatus prevents President Bush from using federal troops in a low enforcement role. Yet law enforcement is absolutely required before any sort of relief operations could take place. Thus either Blanco had to request the President to use federal troops in her state, or she had to use the National Guard in a non-federal role to do this. This is because the National Guard are treated in two separate ways under Posse Comitatus.

If the National Guard unit is called up by the President, then they're federal troops and as such they cannot be used in a law enforcement capacity. If the National Guard unit is called up by their state's Govenor, then they are not federal troops and they can be used in a law enforcement capacity.

So Bush absolute could not intervene in New Orleans to bring about law and order because the law prevented him from using any forces available to him to do so. And without that law and order, or at least the beginning of it, any attempts at relief or evacuation would be doomed to failure from attacks by roving gangs.

So what are the things that Blanco could have done that would have secured New Orleans and allowed relief operations to take place?

1. She would have to request President Bush to send federal troops in to restore law and order.

2. She would have to mobilize all of LA's National Guard and send them into New Orleans to restore law and order.

3. She would have to request National Guard units to be loaned from surrounding states, and send them into New Orleans to restore law and order.

Any one of these 3 things would have secured New Orleans and allow the relief operations to progress. Yet Blanco studiously avoided doing any of these three things until the pressure for her to act was so great it couldn't be ignored any longer.

So why did she do what she did? She had a Cat-5, then it turned into a Cat-4 at the last minute, storm heading to her largest underwater city. Yet Blanco didn't mobilized her National Guard until the last minute, and even then it was only about 1,800 men. Which is frankly a joke even if the levees didn't break.

And once the levees broke and everything went to hell, why didnt' she call for the President to send in the 82nd Airborne and the US Marines? A couple battalions of Iraq veterans would have turned any would be modern Mongol into hamburger.

To get to this point Blanco had to take the exact specific steps necessary to not solve the situation herself, and to prevent the President from doing so independently.