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Originally Posted by scaeagles
...or get the national guard in there to keep order in the first couple of days afterward.
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Nothing local government could have done about that without the Federal government preparing the guard days ahead of time. The national guard was mobilized immediately...but it's made up mostly of people with full time jobs, not units sitting on a base. It takes 3 days minimum to mobilize the national guard, especially in its thinned out state with so many of them in Iraq. Martial Law or not, had the guard been mobilized 4 days BEFORE the hurricane, they would have been ready to get into the city and start rescuing people and handing out aid
immediately, even if they weren't allowed to take police action (though I'd bet their mere presence would have severely reduced the amount of need for police action even without martial law...if I see a dude with an AK, I'm not going to go check the news paper to find out if he's been granted the power to shoot me or not).
There is absolutely no excuse for news crews being able to get those stupid vans to the Convention Center
days before the guard, and that's not something local government has control over.