Reply #12: Wider Powers for U.S. Forces (Using Katrina to undermine Posse Comitatus?)

[guruoo]

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
Wider Powers for U.S. Forces in Disasters Are Under Review
# The White House would like to dispatch troops faster and give them law enforcement duties.

By Peter Gosselin and Doyle McManus, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — A senior White House official said Saturday that in the wake of the hurricane that demolished part of the nation's Gulf Coast, the Bush administration was studying whether to expand the president's powers to deploy the U.S. military in natural disasters.

Dan Bartlett, counselor to President Bush, said that the administration was reviewing whether to increase the president's power to dispatch troops at the outset of a disaster and to give them law enforcement duties.

"There's agreement that this is something that has to be studied," Bartlett said in an interview.

The administration's interest in expanding presidential powers to deploy the military on United States soil stems partly from its frustration over the inability to negotiate an agreement on chain of command with Louisiana's governor in the first days after Hurricane Katrina struck.
<snip>
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-posse11sep11,1,4531511.story