Armistice Day
From John Keegan's description of the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916), in The Face of Battle: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme:

In some battalions, the men were able to walk upright, with arms sloped or ported, as they had been expecting. In others they were soon bent forward, like men walking into a strong wind and rain, their bayonets fixed and their rifles horizontal. 'Troops always, in my experience', wrote Lord Chandos, whose observation this is, 'unconsciously assume this crouching position when advancing against heavy fire.' [...]

[T]he last brigade [had] a mile of open ground to cover before it reached its own front line, a safe enough passage if the enemy's machine-guns had been extinguished, otherwise a funeral march. A sergeant of the 3rd Tyneside Irish (26th Northumberland Fusiliers), describes how it was: 'I could see, away to my left and right, long lines of men. Then I heard the "patter, patter" of machine-guns in the distance. By the time I'd gone another ten yards there seemed to be only a few men left around me; by the time I had gone twenty yards, I seemed to be on my own. Then I was hit myself.'

The photograph is by Tony Novosel, via a post you should visit, Ghosts of the Great War, 2005, by Teresa Nielsen Hayden at "Making Light." posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:11:00 AM -- |    

 
House anti-torture measure vote may be today
Via Laura Rozen ("War and Piece"), USA Today reports that a House measure matching the Senate's McCain amendment may be voted on today -- and has good prospects of passing:

Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., says Bush and Vice President Cheney have lobbied House Republicans to oppose the amendment, but Blunt stopped short of saying he would urge members to vote no. 'It's hard to imagine it wouldn't get a lot of votes,' he said. In the Senate, the torture ban was approved 90-9.

The amendment would ban 'cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment' of any person in U.S. custody, regardless of location or nationality. It was authored by McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

In the House, the ban is backed by another Vietnam combat veteran, Rep. John Murtha. The conservative Pennsylvania Democrat wrote in a letter to House colleagues that revelations about abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody are 'degrading our society and its political and legal systems.' He says he has the votes — including some Republicans — to win House approval of McCain's amendment.

Recent revelations of what deserves to be called a gulag of secret CIA detention centers in Poland and Romania hasn't helped the torture crowd cause much:

Reports by the group Human Rights Watch and The Washington Post that the CIA is holding detainees at secret detention centers have heightened concerns. The CIA has refused to comment on whether the sites exist.

"They lost my trust when they did that," says Murtha, who sits on the panel that determines funding for the Pentagon and CIA. "By not telling us, they lied."
(links added)

Institutional torture and cruelty are the universal democracy solvents. They'll hide them, cover them up, they'll use them to intimidate, they'll undermine human rights around the world and ultimately here at home, they'll get the message nothing at all is off limits. Call your Representative as soon as you can. Meanwhile, if his measure fails this time for whatever reason, McCain vows to keep attaching his amendment to bills the Bush administration will be reluctant to veto. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:16:00 PM -- |    

 
The August 27 Katrina emergency declaration
Harmless mistake or deadly bungle?

White House Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance For Louisiana, August 27, 2005:

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The statement seemed reasonable and even timely enough; Katrina was still churning out in the Gulf of Mexico that Thursday evening, and already the federal government appeared to be spinning up, ready to come to the aid of threatened Louisiana parishes.

But when it got specific, the declaration listed only parishes in the northern tier of Louisiana, completely omitting Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, Plaquemines and other parishes that were clearly in the greatest danger.* So on its face, at least, the statement confined FEMA to northern Louisiana as it authorized FEMA to

coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of [...]

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.

But by the 29th, both the White House Statement on Federal Disaster Assistance for Louisiana and revised emergency declarations had cleaned up the parish listings.

Politically, of course, the August 27 emergency declaration was quite significant. As recriminations flew amid the obviously botched rescue and relief efforts, the August 27th statement allowed a senior Bush official to imply (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the Bush administration was more prompt even than Louisiana governor Blanco in declaring a state of emergency.*** Many columnists and bloggers, for whatever it was worth, followed suit. But even as a political fig leaf, an emergency declaration omitting Orleans, St. Tammany, and Plaquemines parishes is obviously not of the greatest value.

Was the declaration in fact in error? A check of other emergency and disaster declarations archived at FEMA suggests it was. First, both subsequent hurricane emergency declarations, for Hurricanes Ophelia and Rita, did not make the same mistake of excluding precisely those counties or parishes which were the likeliest sites of these hurricanes' landfalls. (Maps to the right show this for the Louisiana Hurricane Rita emergency and disaster declarations.)

Second, it seems significant that the August 27 declaration was the first hurricane emergency declaration since 1999 -- and therefore the first since FEMA's absorption into the newly formed Department of Homeland Security in 2002.

Finally, as mentioned above, the final September 4 revision of the Katrina emergency declaration all but reversed the one made on August 27.

But did the mistaken August 27 declaration really have important consequences? Or was this simply an embarrassing but minor error, one that was easily corrected at the discretion of the FEMA professionals in charge of the rescue and relief efforts?

Here the public record is less clear, but still suggests there may have been fateful consequences to the mistaken August 27 declaration.

What is the significance of an emergency declaration? According to FEMA, it serves a precise purpose. FEMA explains that in contrast to a Major Disaster Declaration. "[a]n Emergency Declaration is more limited in scope and without the long-term federal recovery programs of a Major Disaster Declaration. Generally, federal assistance and funding are provided to meet a specific emergency need or to help prevent a major disaster from occurring."

In meeting those emergency needs, FEMA follows a set of procedures that resembles -- not by chance -- nothing so much as a military campaign: reconnaissance teams are sent out, bases and staging areas are established, logistical supply trains are set in motion. The FEMA training manual "Federal Response System Overview", lays out several specific effects of a presidential emergency declaration on subsequent emergency response activity :

In support of response activities under the FRP [Federal Response Plan -- ed.], several kinds of operating facilities have been identified to facilitate movement and utilization of personnel and resources in the affected area.

• Point of Departure (POD) is the designated location (typically an airport) within or near the task force Point of Assembly where task forces initiate their transportation to the affected area.

• Point of Arrival (POA) is the designated location (typically an airport) within or near the disaster affected area where newly arriving staff, supplies and equipment are initially directed.

• Mobilization Center (Mob Center) is the designated location at which response personnel and resources are received from the POA and pre-position for deployment to a local Staging Area or directly to an incident site, as required. A Mob Center also provides temporary support services, such as food and billeting, for response personnel prior to their deployment to Staging Areas or operating sites.

• Staging Area(s) The facility at the local jurisdictional level near the disaster site where personnel and equipment are assembled for the immediate deployment to an operational site.

It may be that the August 27 declaration influenced the locations of these places and areas, essentially putting a "Destination: Northern Louisiana" stamp on supplies and personnel itineraries -- with no mechanism for middle level FEMA management to rescind that and position supplies and personnel where they were actually needed. Moreover, in the transition to a relatively new National Response Plan, many may not have even suspected there was a problem -- assuming instead that someone else was taking care of "part two" of getting the supplies on to New Orleans or elsewhere in Louisiana. Enter (or rather, wait for) world class ditherer and preening fussbudget Michael Brown...

As is well known, numerous news accounts from the Katrina aftermath paint a picture of unprecedented logistical confusion. Ice shipments sent hither and yon; food stockpiles and other forms of assistance turned away; hospital ships left unused while patients underwent primitive triage in New Orleans airports; volunteers and professional help held back from the disaster area. Many of the screwups had their roots in other key features of the Katrina debacle, most notably the unfounded fears of armed mob violence in New Orleans. But a mistaken list of parishes coupled with unprecedented incompetence in the higher reaches of FEMA could not have helped matters.

The story is further complicated by the advent of the "National Response Plan" (NRP) in December 2004. While concepts like "Point of Arrival" or "Mobilization Center" survive vestigially (in the glossary), these kinds of operational details seem to have been beyond the scope of the new plan -- despite its 426 pages. The precise connection between a specific list of counties (or parishes) in a presidential emergency declaration and FEMA's hour-to-hour plans is elusive in this document -- yet it superseded the old "Federal Response Plan" (FRP) by April of 2005. The transition to the NRP may have additionally burdened FEMA responders more familiar with the old system -- if only by making them less willing to challenge high level mistakes thought to possibly be "part of the plan."

Nothing I've written should be construed to be an accusation that the August 27 declaration was intentionally misspecified, in order to somehow punish southern Louisiana for some unknown reason; that seems unlikely. When I pointed out the questions about the August 27 declaration to an emergency law expert in mid-September, the response I got was simply "it would be funny if it weren't so serious." It may be that this is a screwup on such an unprecedented level that no one is willing to address it.

Enter the blogosphere. Among the specific questions to FEMA officials that I would pose would be:

1. Who drew up the list of parishes Bush included in his August 27 emergency declaration?
2. What were the precise, operational implications of that list in the ensuing rescue and relief efforts? Specifically, did this list affect the POAs and PODs?
3. What was the motive for correcting the August 27 declaration to its final September 4 form? Were the revisions necessary before actions could be taken, or were they simply to confirm actions already being taken?
4. Basically, did the mistaken August 27 emergency declaration adversely affect rescue and relief efforts in Louisiana?
   

=====
* First noted on this site in If that's not incompetence, what is it?", borrowing the title of the seminal post on the issue by Bob Harris, via Gary Farber.
** On disaster declaration maps, parishes colored orange received the broadest federal aid (public and individual assistance, unrestricted to any categories), implying the heaviest storm damage; parishes colored green received the narrowest federal aid (limited public assistance), implying lesser storm damage.
*** Via a Katrina timeline compiled at Josh Marshall's TPMCafe site. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:12:00 AM -- |    

 
"Refresher"?
The Washington Post's Jim Vandehei reports ("Bush Orders Staff to Attend Ethics Briefings"):

According to a memo sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the 'spirit as well as the letter' of all ethics laws and rules. As a result, 'the White House counsel's office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information,' according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a senior White House aide.

Interesting. I'd only quibble with the choice of the word "refresher" -- anything besides "don't get caught" will be breaking new ground with this bunch. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:36:00 AM -- |