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highnote
09-12-2005, 07:35 PM
Interesting article from WSJ.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB112647802773837460-Y_nBtKfDzhhHvfP2CPJzchIQlbw_20060912,00.html?mod=t ff_main_tff_top

"The unspoken policy in the Pentagon is to minimize the active duty military's support to civil authority except as a last resort," says retired Col. T.X. Hammes, who commanded the Marines Chemical Biological Incident Response Force in 2002 and 2003.

Maybe what we need are quasi military units trained to assist local services in times of disaster or invasion? Not sure who would oversee it or what its exact nature would be, but something has to change.

This WSJ article says it is illegal for the National Guard to perform law enforcement. I wonder if that was true on May 4, 1970 at Kent State? That's a topic for another thread, though.

Interesting food for thought, though. It's obvious that many parts of the U.S. are proably unprepared to deal with a disaster on the scale of Katrina.