Days After Disaster, Bush Sending Active-Duty Troops

The Associated Press is reporting:

President Bush, seeking to stem criticism that a slow federal response has contributed to needless misery, said Saturday he is ordering additional active duty forces to the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast. “The enormity of the task requires more resources,” the president said. “In America we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.”

Bush said 4,000 active duty troops are already in the area and 7,000 more will arrive in the next 72 hours from the Army’s 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg, N.C., 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, and the Marines’ 1st and 2nd Expeditionary forces from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Those troops will be in addition to some 21,000 National Guard troops already in the region.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., both requested active military troops on the ground in Louisiana.

The decision came after the president met for nearly an hour with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and others involved in planning the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Bush took the rare step of delivering his Saturday morning radio broadcast live from the White House Rose Garden with Rumsfeld, Chertoff and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by his side.

The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.