Walter Pincus has a follow-up to his article from a week ago describing a draft revised doctrine that contemplates the use of nuclear weapons to preempt WMD attacks or stockpiles by nations or terrorist groups. The coverage has generated push-back from across the political spectrum, especially in the parts of Congress that have been resolute in pouring cold water on the Bush Administration's infatuation with bunker busters.

Today Pincus reports:

The Pentagon may be having second thoughts about proposed revisions to its nuclear weapons doctrine that would allow commanders to seek presidential approval for using atomic arms against nations or terrorists who intend to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against the United States, its troops or allies.

The draft document, disclosure of which has caused a stir among some members of Congress and arms control advocates, would update rules and procedures for using nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy announced by the Bush administration in 2002. Previous versions of the unclassified doctrine have not included scenarios for using nuclear weapons preemptively or specifically against WMD threats.

Before Pincus published his first article, he was told by a Joint Staff spokesman that the draft was in the final stages of review and a few weeks away from being signed. Since the article's publication, the official tune has changed significantly -- Pincus has been told that changes have already been made to the document and lots more internal discussions are yet to come. Congress is also apparently getting reassurances that the revised doctrine is not fait accompli.

Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), who called the draft "disturbing" and "representing old, Cold War thinking," said Defense Department officials told him last week that negotiations and discussions on the draft were still underway.

Hobson, who is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said: "I'm hopeful more rational minds will look at this. It is a very provocative proposal."
[...]
Arms control specialists and others have criticized the draft. Some say formally planning to use nuclear weapons preemptively increases the likelihood they will be used. Others said endorsement of preemptive strikes will make it tougher to persuade nonnuclear nations to forgo building an atomic arsenal.

Hobson said such negotiations would be difficult "with these kinds of policies out in public." [ed. especially sensitive timing given the failure to agree on a non-proliferation agenda at the US Summit and the current brouhaha over Iran at the IAEA]

Jeffrey Lewis (armscontrolwonk) has been all over this story for months, since he first came across the draft on the web. His disclosure in May 2005 prompted DOD to take down temporarily the entire Joint Electronic Library! His recent walk down memory lane provides links to relevant docs and discussions of the proposed revisions, including some items that are no longer on any official sites.

Pincus seems to have picked up on the story after Hans Kristensen provided an analysis of the draft in Arms Control Today. Kristensen covers a number of issues in his analysis of the draft, including implications for the strategic/theater distinction, strategic use of conventional weapons and missile defense.

For our purposes, however, I'll just focus on one section, where Kristensen questions the underlying assumptions of the proposed doctrinal changes. These changes are driven by the notion that the possible preemptive use of nuclear weapons is an effective deterrent against a WMD threat from enemies other than those with large standing nuclear arsenals. Or as Kristensen says, "For the nuclear planners, it seems so simple: deterrence must be credible, and the way to make it more credible is to increase the capabilities and number of strike options against any conceivable scenario."

The result of a focus on asymmetrical threats is a lowering of the bar on nuclear use. Kristensen explains:

The signs of [a break from old doctrine] are evident throughout the new nuclear doctrine in its description of the need for responsive nuclear forces that can “rapidly respond” to threats anywhere. It even defines a new category of nuclear planning, Crisis Action Planning, as “the time-sensitive development of joint operations plans and orders in response to an imminent crisis.” It is different from highly structured Deliberate Planning and flexible Adaptive Planning:
[...]

The basis for this drive for speed and responsiveness is the perception of the threat that faces the United States and its allies in the 21st century. It has become almost a mantra in national security discussions and analysis to portray today’s multipolar security environment as more unpredictable and dangerous than even the Soviet threat during the Cold War. The new nuclear doctrine enshrines that hype into nuclear doctrine.

Although today’s threats from “rogue” states and terrorists are serious indeed, it is healthy to keep in mind, especially when discussing nuclear weapons policy, that they are on a completely different scale than the global nuclear standoff that characterized the Cold War. Then, the human race and life on the planet was held at nuclear gunpoint for four decades, only 30 minutes away from global annihilation. Today’s nuclear strategy often operates on a far different scale: incorporating the far more limited threat from hostile states and even terrorists.

Yet, the new doctrine ignores this distinction and instead lowers the crisis intensity level needed to potentially trigger use of U.S. nuclear weapons by replacing “war” with “conflict.” The change may seem trivial, but its implication is important and deliberate. The change was proposed by STRATCOM, which explained that “[r]eplacing the word ‘war’ with ‘conflict involving the use of’ emphasizes the nature of most conflicts resulting in use of a nuclear weapon. Nuclear war implies the mutual exchange of nuclear weapons between warring parties—not fully representative of the facts.”
[...]

To be sure, some parts of this approach are not new: the 1995 doctrine also considered a role for nuclear weapons against terrorists despite serious questions about the credibility of such a role. Put together, however, the rhetoric in the new doctrine indicates that military planners anticipate that U.S. nuclear weapons might be used in much less intense crises than envisioned previously.

In the wake of Katrina, the high priority placed on a nuclear response to terrorist WMD threats has eerie echoes with what we've been discovering about the new Department of Homeland Security. As has become increasingly evident, the widely-criticized focus on terrorist incidents in the DHS list of potential disaster response scenarios -- to the almost complete exclusion of natural disasters -- has had real world consequences that were never intended by those in who orignally proposed creating DHS. The priorites of both DOD or DHS do not, however, necessarily reflect the judgments of even a Republican-controlled Congress. As Walter Pincus points out:

The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations.

Another scenario for a possible nuclear preemptive strike is in case of an "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

That and other provisions in the document appear to refer to nuclear initiatives proposed by the administration that Congress has thus far declined to fully support.

Last year, for example, Congress refused to fund research toward development of nuclear weapons that could destroy biological or chemical weapons materials without dispersing them into the atmosphere.

The draft document also envisions the use of atomic weapons for "attacks on adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons."

But Congress last year halted funding of a study to determine the viability of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator warhead (RNEP) -- commonly called the bunker buster -- that the Pentagon has said is needed to attack hardened, deeply buried weapons sites.

In highlighting the draft doctrine's emphasis on rogues and terrorists, Kristensen points to a significant discrepancy between how the Bush Administration portrays its policies -- to the public and Congress -- and the actual policies being pursued by the executive branch.

Although there has been extensive public debate on whether to build new or modified nuclear weapons, there has been essentially no debate about the doctrine that guides the use of nuclear weapons and influences future requirements.
[...]

Still, the doctrine and editing documents reveal a significant contradiction between the Bush administration’s public rhetoric about reducing the role of nuclear weapons and the guidance issued to the nuclear planners. Although the overall number of warheads is being reduced, the new doctrine guiding planning for the remaining arsenal reaffirms an aggressive posture with nuclear forces on high alert, ready to be used in an increasing number of limited-strike scenarios against adversaries anywhere, even pre-emptively.
[...]

Instead of drastically reducing the role of nuclear weapons, as the Bush administration told the public it would do, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism seem to have spooked the administration into continuing and deepening a commitment to some of the most troubling aspects of the nuclear war-fighting mentality that symbolized the Cold War.

This last comment -- that the Bush Administration seems spooked -- reminded me of an interesting observation Jim Hoagland made a few days ago in the context of the feeble federal response to Katrina.

It is impossible to understand the driving ethos of the Bush presidency -- including the decision to go to war in Iraq and perhaps Bush's seeming disengagement from a mere hurricane -- without understanding the president's burning determination to be able to say that he did everything he could to avoid a second major terrorist attack on the United States, agree with his measures or not.

Bush's informal minister of war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, perhaps best captures this spirit. Think constantly and urgently about 10/12, he reportedly tells Pentagon staffers in private meetings -- and what you will wish you had done to prevent it. He adds when displeased with suggestions: "It won't be this [stuff]."

The 10/12 reference is Rumsfeld's epigrammatic way not of predicting the date of a new terror attack but of emphasizing that the horror of 9/11 is likely to be repeated and augmented. It is a chilling symbol of the broad challenge that Bush must confront.

Hoagland was pleading for a two-fold change in the Administration's approach. First, the Administration has to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Although it's understandable that addressing terrorist threats is of critical concern, it can't be allowed to overwhelm the rest of the government's domestic security and national defense functions and policies. And second, it's time to halt the Administration's extreme penchant for secrecy, finally define its strategy for dealing with terrorism, and share that strategy with the public.

I would take Hoagland's argument one step further -- without public discussions of key elements of the US strategy, there can be no correctives to internal executive branch incentives to over-emphasize terrorist threats to the detriment of other policy priorities. Katrina has highlighted a number of ways that the GWOT has distorted policy: questionable reallocations of bureaucratic roles driven by counterterrorism concerns; misguided personnel decisions; and budget processes that have shortchanged critical government functions. The GWOT has become the excuse for bureaucrats to justify their positions and increased budgets, for members of Congress to bring home bacon to their district, and rent-seeking beltway bandits and entrepreneurs to hitch a ride on the gravy train. Without some transparency -- via more vigorous Congressional oversight and the media -- the federal government is not going to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The problem is not exclusive to DHS. We've seen a similar story in DOD. Every service has been busy repackaging its current and dreamed-for capacities and weapons platforms as mission critical to the GWOT. Not surprisingly, a lot of this has simply been old wine in new bottles in preparation for budget battles and Rumsfeld's current QDR. Reassignment of roles within the military's bureaucracy, driven by a concern with undifferentiated "WMD" threats (now reacronymed an even less specific "WME" to the chagrin of the Armchair Generalist), raise suspicions that DOD may be repeating the same sorts of mistakes DHS has made in its reorganization. And now we see proposed changes in nuclear doctrine -- changes that are highly debatable and unlikely to receive Congressional endorsement -- being driven by the GWOT mindset.

Unfortunately, the lessons learned by DOD from this most recent incident of unwanted media attention may not be those advocated by Mr Hoagland. Walter Pincus concludes his article on the Pentagon being forced to rethink some of its doctrinal innovations:

One former senior combatant commander said that planning for preemptive use of nuclear and conventional weapons was included in past doctrinal statements, but never in unclassified versions. "This is just a draft, but represents the lack of expertise on the part of some Pentagon staff members" for including it in an unclassified document, he said.
[...]
When the draft doctrine was first submitted earlier this year for comment to the military services, Jeffrey Lewis, research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said he discovered this Navy response on a Pentagon Web site: "There is repeated reference to how critical it is that nuclear and conventional forces be integrated, but there is no explanation of how to do this."

Lewis said the Joint Staff responded: "Many things remain under development in classified fora, like the integration discussion."

Shorter Pincus: We still don't know what else is part of the proposed revisions, and nobody's going to be foolish enough to not classify a draft again.

Shorter lessons for the rest of us: Gee, what a little sunshine can do!

Addenedum: Forgot to include a link to this interesting discussion of the broader nuclear doctrine debate by Daniel Nexon at Duck of Minerva. He points out some things that are not "new" in the proposed approach. Preemption, per se, is certainly not new -- in the nuclear arena specifically, the US has always refused to adopt a "no first use" policy. But, as Daniel argues, there are times when ambiguity has its virtues, especially in making deterrents credible.

UPDATE: If you can't get enough discussion of North Korea, Iran, nuclear doctrine and the NPT, further discussion in the post and comments over at ZenPundit.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

When we first started to see the dimensions of the efforts that Katrina will require -- whether in massive recovery or just doing better to prepare for the next catastrophe -- my initial reaction was "let's go after the pork." Now N.Z. Bear has followed up his site's Katrina relief fund-raising effort with a "porkbusters" venture, where you too can add some pork to be busted.



Now that's a worthy cause that should generate bipartisan support.

Over the past couple of years, I've been an interested observer of the ongoing attempts by major US/UK newspapers to come to terms with the web. Other than the Guardian, which seems to have made an early decision to drive much of its emerging identity from its internet presence, and then tackle its newsprint redesign, most papers have taken a fairly unimaginative incremental approach to figuring out what the web means for them. Each newspaper made its big structural decisions -- subscription or not, registration or not, archives access -- and then tinkered. The vast majority of the tinkerings have been fairly no-brainer, such as links to relevant visual content (e.g. videos, graphics or photos), navigation to related articles in the same paper, and a growing use of text links to other sites -- the latter being a common feature of business articles, where names of companies are hyperlinked to the company's home page or stock market data.

With the summer slow-season at an end, we are seeing some bigger-than-incremental steps that suggest the big players are starting to place their bets on one or another route for developing their business. The most striking -- and strikingly different -- approaches are from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Some months ago, the NYT gave advance warning of its big upcoming change -- placing more premium content behind an online subscription wall and adding some services (mainly archives access) to the subscription package. Courtesy The Agonist, here's the most recent promo from the NYT:

On Monday, Sept. 19, NYTimes.com will launch a new subscription service, TimesSelect, an important step in the development of The New York Times.

Subscribers to TimesSelect will have exclusive online access to many of our most influential columnists in Op-Ed, Business, New York/Region and Sports. In addition to reading the columns, TimesSelect subscribers can also engage with our columnists through video interviews and Web-only postings.

All of our news, features, editorials and analysis will remain free to readers of NYTimes.com, as will our interactive graphics, multimedia and popular video minutes.

As part of TimesSelect, The Times is also opening up its vast archive of articles reaching back 25 years and eventually back to the paper's founding in 1851. TimesSelect subscribers can read up to 100 articles from the archive a month. For many years our readers have asked for seamless access to The Times's historical archive, and we are now making this available as part of TimesSelect....

TimesSelect will cost $49.95 a year and will be free for home delivery subscribers to the newspaper. This week, you can sign up early to get uninterrupted access to the columns when TimesSelect launches Sept. 19.

The move to put the NYT's famous op-ed pages behind a subscription wall has generated a great deal of, mostly humorous, blogospheric comment over the months since the move was announced. Some bloggers regularly count the days until their least-favorite pundit disappears behind the wall so they "don't have to read him/her anymore." But in practical terms, the great question is usually framed not as "will I subscribe?" but rather "will I still link?" The impression from remarks by most political bloggers who have to pay subscriptions out of their personal piggybanks is a "wait and see" attitude. As John Aravosis of Americablog explained to Editor & Publisher -- most will figure that any op-ed or column that's a real "must read" is going to be passed around by email or available somewhere on the web by hook or by crook. The "will I link" has always been a protocol challenge for bloggers who want to link to news items that are subscription only -- such as the WSJ or even the NYT where, without a link generator, the original url of an article disappears into the black hole of a paid archives in relatively short order.

Yet the "to link or not to link" issue doesn't seem to have been a prime consideration of the NYT's management. Perhaps that's due to their overwhelming current margin of links over all other competitors. As reported by Technorati's State of the Blogosphere August 2005, the NYT clocks in at 50,000 links, with the Post the closest behind at 30,000. With that web presence as a base, the thinking at the NYT appears to be two-fold. How to use the technology of the web to differentiate content distribution for different segments of the paying public. And especially important in a world of declining print circulation and resulting threats to traditional advertising revenues, how to make the paper's online offerings reinforce rather than cannibalize its print audience.

Although the NYT's parent company, The New York Times Company, produced a flurry of excitement and speculation about their internet strategy when they acquired about.com last February, the NYT seems to have decided to be on the web, not of it. Jay Rosen applied that distinction initially to the Guardian, which under Simon Waldman, clearly has decided to strive to be of the web. Now it looks like the Washington Post has made the same decision the Guardian took awhile back.

The Post's new directions are being introduced with little fanfare by comparison with the NYT's big change. But over the past several months it seems as if every week brings innovations to the Post. The most visible immediate change is the revamped home page -- not terribly exciting visually, but tailored geographically for the user, which is great if, like I am, you're a resident of the Washington metro area. It's convenient for out-of-towners as well, since they don't have to wade through DC/VA/MD politics, the latest in traffic nightmares, and the town's Redskins obsession which us locals can't live without. Advertisers, whether local or national, will undoubtedly enjoy better targeting. Yes, I know, it takes an extra step at registration, but set your cookies and you're ready to roll. It's not as if the Post is one of those rarely-used sites that makes registration such an aggravation -- a small price to pay for great free content, and a mini-extra-step that enhances user experience.

The visual and navigation overhaul of the Post's Opinion section is even more recent and, given how poorly most online newspaper Opinion pages are organized, highly welcome. But the real innovation is arriving via weekly introductions of more and more reporter-produced content in a variety of shapes, sizes and publishing rhythms. The "live online discussions" seem in recent months to have attracted more enthusiastic attention both from Post writers and from the online audience, perhaps because the discussions appear to be more relevant to other content on the site as navigation continues to improve. Blogs for different purposes are popping up everywhere. Some reporters' blogs are now actual Typepad blogs with comments and trackbacks. RSS has become ubiquitous, no longer limited to a handful of pre-defined categories. And all of this content -- both traditional "for publication" stories and the more informal reporter journals -- is increasingly integrated with a whole range of internal and external content. Not only are The Washington Post Company's other properties on the web (Slate and Newsweek) highlighted, but now the entire blogosphere as captured by Technorati shows up for each piece of content.

Just take this week's special live-blogging of the Roberts hearings as an example. A nice little Typepad blog, with comments, trackbacks and RSS syndication. A regular stream throughout the day of summaries of each segment of the proceedings, interspersed with links to the video of the relevant portion of the hearings and with helpful links to case law under discussion. And further links to relevant sections, news stories, analyses, online discussions, video, transcripts, etc., both on and off site. Sweet.

The overall impression from these changes is that content is growing more dynamic -- no longer simply the electronic publication of a series of static stories, or photos or graphics. Each Post page becomes the center of, or portal to, a constantly changing network of relevant linky goodness.

The changes are also increasingly reflected in the approach reporters are taking to their respective "beats." Certainly, the "stories for publication" remain fixed by the size, form and flow that are dictated by the conventions of newsprint distribution. In that domain, the Post competes with other news outlets in its attempts to tell news stories better and, in its particular government-related specialties, with greater coverage. But the news stories are being enriched with complementary content by those same reporters, who are bringing more than simply extra information.

The more conversational format discourages the "neutral observer" voice, the practice of passing along press releases as news, and the "he said/she said" scripts. Along with the practice of linking to other sources comes the reporter's commentary on what each link means in the overall picture. A more candid perspective from the reporter emerges from this conversational voice. The most striking example has been the daily White House "briefing" now written by Dan Froomkin. As his daily column has become more bloggy in format, it's also become far more informative. Well before Katrina, which seemed in Froomkin's words to bring the political press to an "emperor has no clothes" moment, Froomkin had broken out of the normal constraints of the White House press corp -- which seems doomed to play either stenographer for press secretaries or Presidential psychoanalyst. It's as if the more liberal form of expression has been equally liberating for the content being expressed.

If the printed news story is history's first draft, a permanent record however partial of "what happened," the new types of complementary content implicitly acknowledge the limits of that permanent printed record. The stories are shown to have added layers. The complementary content also celebrates the fact that the stories are constantly evolving -- evolving not simply in the sense that tomorrow's events will overtake today's or that we will have more information about those events in the future, but that their context and meaning are always in the process of morphing as they become part of broader conversations.

Those broader conversations are being showcased by the Post's new features. Whereas the NYT appears indifferent to the potential loss of links to their stable of famous columnists, the Post is promoting on its own site every link from every blogger, no matter how obscure, to each of its articles or blogs. Whereas the NYT is creating an incentive for its home delivery subscribers to keep paying subscription fees and maintain current circulation levels for advertisers, the Post is creating an incentive for every blogger or website to see the Post the preferred place to get and link to the news.

Now why might links matter in the great grand scheme of things? Here are some thoughts on that very point by Eric Nelson, a Senior Editor at John Wiley and Sons, specializing in current affairs and history, who explained in a post on Jay Rosen's PressThink "why you don't do a book deal with the big name columnist to whom no one links."

[T]here are some major newspaper and magazine columnists, whom I won’t name, but I never see them linked to, ever. These people are all “famous,” but to me, if absolutely no one is blogging your stuff, no one’s reading it in the paper either.
[...]
In real estate, it’s location, location, location. In publishing, it’s insight, insight, insight. When a reader picks up a book, they don’t just want to know about a subject, they want to understand it. Even those hot new biographies you see advertised promising new information from uncovered archives or letters, only sell because of what that new information means. No one would want a whole book about Nixon’s newly uncovered dental records, unless they revealed something important about him. (Like he had microphones in his teeth.)

The book that sells the best on a hot new topic, like terrorism, is usually the one with the clearest insights. And now, the article or blog post with the clearest insights is often the most widely read one as well.

One idea I’m always pitching to Jay, and anyone else who will listen, is that we’ve moved from the “Information Age” to the “Age of Insight.” When Bush announced his budget, for instance, you could get that information from any one of thousands of sources. But a handful of people presented the best explanations (left and right) of what his budget really means. Because of blogs, it’s easy to figure out who those people are, and sometimes they’re even bloggers.

Not only are the economic cost/benefit analyses for the NYT and the Post remarkably different. I expect the difference in the two approaches will in the long run have an impact on the content of the two newspapers and ultimately their philosophy of what it means to be a news organization. The NYT proposes to continue to "deliver" its "product." The Post, by contrast, is becoming a portal to a dynamic network of content, only a portion of which is home-grown. But by placing its own content at the heart of the portal and letting its home-grown content interact both with other Post-produced content and with content produced by others, the Post is pursuing a far different model than a classic portal, which aggregates content produced by others. In the process of distributing that home-grown content via the portal, the Post's own way of producing content, and the content itself, will continually be changed or enriched by the interaction with other content and content producers. Maybe, if Eric Nelson is right, the process may even produce added insight from Post reporters on their blogs, or from the commenters or trackbackers or Technorati-linkers, even if they're not named Friedman, Dowd, Brooks, Tierney, Kristoff or Krugman.

Very, very different bets. The NYT's business model is easier to discern than the Post Company's business model -- which clearly incorporates not just the Post but its other media properties. But then again, the NYT's model is easier to understand because it's basically defensive -- do better, whether in terms of quality vis a vis competitors, advertising revenues or satisfying their existing customer base, with their current newspaper business. The Post is, bit by bit, devising a new type of multi-media news business.

I'm enjoying watching this new creature emerge as the Post writers and managers learn from their growing laboratory of experiments. Now if they'd just trash the old Newsweek site, with the clunky MSNBC frame, and build a totally new clean one from scratch!

At A Fistful of Euros, Doug Muir (Halfway down the Danube) digs through a recent Eurobarometer poll on EU enlargement and finds some fascinating patterns.

The big picture holds no surprise -- those polled from countries which are newly added members are decidedly more enthusiastic about further enlargement than those from the older fifteen members. And Albania and Turkey don't generate much enthusiasm at all.

Where things get interesting is breaking down the poll further by both individual member countries and candidate countries. Among the older fifteen, the Brits are less favorable to enlargement in the abstract, and more so when considering the candidacies of specific countries. The reverse is true for Spain and Portugal. And Austrians seem to be a bunch of Dr No's across the board -- maybe that's what 50 years of neutrality will do for you.

Long-standing diplomatic ties seem to be less important for producing favorable attitudes than more recent economic links -- or else, familiarity breeds contempt -- but Romania isn't a favorite with the French public, nor is Croatia with Germans. And the biggest surprise for me is that Bulgaria seems to have had wide success in winning hearts if not minds.

Doug has lots more interesting bits.

And while we're on the subject of aFoE's coverage of Europolitics, check out guest blogger Alex Harrowell (my favorite Yorkshire Ranter) and his most recent German election watch. He reads the German press so you don't have to pretend to and sketches the permutations and combinations of coalitions, grand and not so grand, including "the possibility of the imagination-buggering Schröder-Lafontaine reconciliation."

Yes, folks, it's long past time we took the fight to the enemy, and Giblets has just the cunning plan for the new Global War on Weather.

Dennis Hastert's comments have triggered a great deal of discussion about rebuilding -- whether, when, where, how. But because of the amount of destruction and the time it will take to even begin to dry things out, rebuilding is not going to be on the menu for many of the people who have left or are finally starting to be evacuated. The Washington Post sums up the size of the challenge relative to anything the US has seen before.

The largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War reverberated across the country from its starting point in New Orleans yesterday, as more than half a million people uprooted by Hurricane Katrina sought shelter, sustenance and the semblance of new lives. [Given that the population of New Orleans alone is more than 400,000, that estimate of numbers affected is clearly conservative.]
[...]
Katrina has scattered more than twice as many people as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and unmoored more people in a few days than fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Estimating from census data, about 150,000 of the displaced lived below the poverty line even before they lost everything. Far more than 50,000 of them are past retirement age.

Emergency housing, which will need to be available for months at least, is the most urgent need. Even temporary housing in the form of camps or barracks will take time to assemble, given the sheer numbers of homeless the storm has produced. Undoubtedly a reflection of many concerned citizens in the surrounding areas already opening their homes to refugees, the Moveon.org housing site has more offers on its bulletin board from people as far away as New York and Washington, DC than from a 350-mile radius of New Orleans. As hurricanehousing.org notes, those who take up offers of housing in far-away regions will also need part-time job opportunities to pick up a bit of spare cash to get by.

UPDATE: Also see the dedicated site katrinahousing.org. As I noted on a related post at Crooked Timber:

Sure, someone has to have access to the internet to be able to take advantage of these offers. But they don’t have to be hooked up directly – e.g. a relative who lives in your area and has internet access could be hunting for a place for them and could link you up. The people looking via the internet are also unlikely to be the ones who are in absolutely dire straits. But if volunteers who open their homes can take some of the pressure off, it will make it easier for the Red Cross or the Houston Astrodome to do their jobs.

The webservices aren’t intermediaries. You’re on your own to work out the details with anyone who responds to your offer. And no guarantees on who you’re dealing with. So use common sense.

Anyway, the internet can help make distributed solutions a good deal more powerful.

All over the country, the Red Cross is receiving a huge influx of new volunteers who need to be trained and, over the coming months, assigned. Though the burden of preparing volunteers is large, the Red Cross needs a full pipeline of people who can be sent for weeks at a time to help during the coming months. (h/t Gary Farber)

The Red Cross plans to mobilize 9,000 volunteers for minimum two-week deployments to states affected by the hurricane in the coming weeks. They'll staff shelters and help get food and water to victims.

While television images of houses submerged in roof-high waters, crowded shelters and hungry children may compel people to volunteer, veteran relief workers are also trying to figure out who is best for the job. Seasoned workers warn that the job takes an emotional toll.

During the Connecticut class, instructor Anouchka Bayard Blanchard told volunteers to think long and hard before signing up. There are other ways to help if volunteers aren't in good health, think they can't do it or have serious concerns, she said.

"Really what we're trying to get through is the reality of the expectation. Everybody wants to help and that's great, but especially in this situation, the hardship is so grand," said Bayard Blanchard, who has been deployed to Third World countries.

Volunteers need to be ready to deploy with 24 hours notice. Those being trained now could leave as early as next week, or as late as next year. Once they're called, they can bring a backpack or duffel bag packed with essentials such as flashlights and a sleeping bag. They will likely sleep on the floor of shelters with victims. There will be limited food and water, heat and humidity, no electricity and often, poor communication systems.

Before leaving, volunteers must go through a background check, be certified by a doctor as being in good health. Tetanus and Hepatitis A shots are recommended.

And volunteers also have to be able to lift 50 pounds.

It's not just the major issues of food, shelter and essential health care. People from every region of the country are starting to think how to absorb some of the refugees so they can get on with something approaching their lives again. Take the relatively small problem of all the universities in the area being forced to close, almost certainly for at least the coming semester. Brad DeLong today reported that UC Berkeley is trying to figure out whether they can absorb some 10% of Tulane for the fall semester. Tim Burke was speculating earlier on universities opening their doors to students just about ready to start school. And Glenn Reynolds has already noted that Univ of of Tennessee will be taking in 50 law students from Tulane and Loyola. UPDATE: Chronicle of Higher Education has a forum dealing with all sorts of Katrina's university and college issues. There are already offers from insitutions in other regions pouring in to help displaced students and faculty. Also the Chronicle has a Katrina Update blog.

And then there are the mundane but critical problems that need some creative solutions, such as linking hundreds of thousands of people with their mail -- and their pension checks, as Dave Schuler has figured out.

This is simply not "disaster as usual." We'll need lots more creativity coming from every sector of American society -- not just government or the traditional charities -- to help people find their ways back to normalcy.

Jesse Walker, Hit and Run:

"When We Act, We Create Our Own Reality" (Baghdad Bob Redux)

CNN contrasts FEMA chief Michael Brown's account of conditions in New Orleans with the reports emerging from the trenches.

Actually, the CNN piece is a lot more shrill than Jesse suggests.

Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday. The sanitized view came from federal officials at news conferences and television appearances. But the official line was contradicted by grittier, more desperate views from the shelters and the streets.

These conflicting views came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:

And then the CNN article proceeds to recite, chapter and verse, an utter disconnect between statements by federal officials and what Americans were seeing -- simultaneously -- with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears on the air, regarding conditions at the Convention Center, uncollected corpses, evacuations of hospitals, and security.

Amazing. It really is like Baghdad Bob -- "there are no trapped, desperate, dying people regardless of the fact that you think you see them on your TV screens."

Do they think the public are total fools? Or has their command, control and communication system come to a complete halt but they're still behaving as if it were completely operational? If their emergency communication network is totally out of order, somebody at FEMA should just assign a couple of folks to watch cable TV and read the NOLA blog and simply relay the information to the folks who are titularly in charge.

In addition to xenophobic fantasies, there's a great deal of false information floating about regarding public health risks. Unfortunately, this is being actively fed by US government officials. Effect Measure, a public health blog, has important clarifications. (h/t The Next Hurrah)

Misinformation from those who should know better is also occurring in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. DHHS Secretary Leavitt, for example, has warned of the risk of "typhoid and cholera" as a result of contaminated water, while others have talked generally of mosquito-borne disease and the hazards caused by dead people and animals. It is time to separate the real risks from the phantom risks.

Diarrheal disease from contaminated water is a concern, but not cholera and probably not typhoid. In order to get these diseases the water has to be contaminated with the organisms that cause those diseases, neither of which is endemic in that region. What is more likely is gastroenteritis or hepatitis A from enteric viruses or bacteria.[...]

Similarly the presence of dead animals and people is not a health hazard. Dead animals decompose naturally in the environment. Unless they were infected with a contagious organism before death, they will not themselves become the source of disease. The persistent concern in mass disasters over unburied bodies is an urban myth. Mass disasters like floods rarely cause epidemic disease and to suggest otherwise results in misplaced concern and potential diversion of resources from more important issues.

Mosquito-borne illness is a potential concern for some, but needs to be properly understood. Being bitten by mosquitoes is not a health hazard. The mosquitoes themselves must be vectors for a pathogenic agent like malaria or West Nile.[...]

The biggest health hazards may well be those we would classify under "injury." Heat-related illness might be at the top of the list here. As body core temperatures rise above 105 degrees F., mortality increases quickly. The high heat and humidity of the area, coupled with dehydration are a significant health hazard that requires intervention by providing fluids and cooler shelters. The many sources of physical injury, whether from feral animals (snakes, alligators, etc.), sharp metal debris, falls and injuries in an environment where the hazards are numerous and not easily visible can result in substantial accumulated morbidity and even mortality. The only remedy is removal of people to a safer environment, which should be the top priority. this is also true for the many chronically ill and vulnerable people who require medication, external support from power dependent devices and supervision. [edited for typos]

Hard to disagree with the conclusions of DemFromCT at Next Hurrah:

Leavitt needs to stay the hell away from a camera and microphone. Risk communication is a huge need right now. The CDC should have an available spokesperson to debunk fears about dead bodies causing or spreading disease. But the triage and evacuation of the ill from dehydration or existing medical conditions is the story here, followed by exposure, dehydration and other 'battlefield' situations like injuries, and not infectious diseases.

Just to be clear -- it's not that there are no increased risks to diseases like cholera nor that there's absolutely no risk from dead bodies floating about. It's a matter of putting risks in perspective and public health priorities for where immediate attention should be directed. Even if the government can't get in to affected areas to provide assistance, at least they should be providing accurate information so that people can better help themselves. It would also be nice if the media, instead of spreading titillating specters of future horror, could take its responsibilities seriously and start correcting these sorts of potentially fatal but widely shared misapprehensions.

Brian Ulrich makes a very good point in a post at Liberals Against Terrorism about the urban myths (to cast the spreading of false information in its kindest light) that the rest of the world has given the US the cold shoulder. People who should know better are simply making stuff up! The rest of the world is in fact horrified, and offers of official assistance are coming from all over -- as well as charitable contributions.

Radley Balko has been collecting claims from the ususal suspects that no offers of foreign assistance have been forthcoming. From Radley, some outrageous claims and evidence to refute them: Neil Cavuto just telling out-and-out falsehoods, James Lileks (French-bashing, which is particularly absurd given the French emotional attachment to NO, which they tend to think of as partially "theirs" -- at least Lileks had the good grace to post a retraction and admit he hadn't bothered to even check Google because he was feeling grumpy). Also, what the State Department is now saying about welcoming offers of assistance.

And then there's everybody's favorite whipping-boy, the UN, which has of course offered help -- and they actually know a lot about how to deliver humanitarian assistance in the wake of disasters. Jan Egeland, the UN relief official the wingnuts love to hate:

"The United Nations stands ready to help with any kind of disaster expertise that might be required ... in full recognition that the United States is the country in the world that possesses the greatest civilian and military search and rescue and recovery assets themselves," Egeland told Reuters in an interview.

He said U.S. officials had thanked the U.N. for its offer, but had not requested any assistance so far.

Egeland called Katrina one of "the largest, most destructive natural disasters ever."

majikthise has been following the story of the expert Vancouver's Urban Search and Rescue Team, whose help was initially rejected. When it was finally allowed to go to NO, unfortunately, by the time they got to NO the security situation was too far gone for them to be able to jump directly in to help. But undoubtedly their assistance will be extremely useful in the days to come.

Brain's right -- it's time to stop these lies from continuing to spread. Hopefully, Bush will speak on this fairly soon to stop them in their tracks.

The Armchair Generalist has two thoughtful posts that provide essential background on what are certain to be hot topics in the coming days:

• the reorganization of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery functions within the Department of Homeland Security (and especially the changes in FEMA's assigned roles), and


• the military's support, being organized by NORTHCOM, to DHS' disaster response and recovery efforts, especially in light of the strains on the National Guard due to deployment in Iraq.

A full-throated condemnation of Bush Administration policies in these two areas, especially focusing on the effects of restructuring/reprioritization of FEMA in the specific case of New Orleans well before Katrina arrived, is offered by Lorelei Kelly at Democracy Arsenal. She, like the AG, sees these issues as ones of national security. And she thinks the wrong priorities have been set.

A broken levee wall is what caused the city to drown. For years the walls have been sinking. Starting in the 1960's, the federal government began working with regional state and local officials on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA in 1995. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. As blogger Attytood notes, the Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remained about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River. In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain.

FEMA enfeebled: FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, was canceled outright under Bush and conservative congressional leadership. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster was cut in half. In Louisiana, requests for flood mitigation funds were rejected by FEMA this summer.

The FEMA story is receiving a great deal of attention because the alarm bells have been ringing for several years. Kevin Drum has a good collection of links on the history of the agency, which was a disaster (pardon the pun) during Hurricane Andrew under Bush41, was turned into a model of what a government agency can be under Clinton's director James Lee Witt, and has been steadily back-tracking to its old politicized, poorly managed personality under Bush43. See also Kevin's new follow-up post on what's been happening with FEMA, which includes quotes from Witt (Knight-Ridder story) and other disaster management experts on the differences between the sorts of responses planned during Witt's tenure and what's happening now.

It's tempting to frame the debate as "Iraq versus New Orleans." Or even tax cuts versus spending on critical infrastructure, prevention and preparedness. Personally, if I were dictating US policy, I'd start by hacking some of the outlandish pork out of the new Transportation Bill and send it to vulnerable areas. But just staying within the confines of the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, Katrina is raising a series of big questions.

• Do we have the right assessments of where and the degree to which homeland security is vulnerable; does DHS have the right priorities among its duties to "prepare, prevent, respond, recover;" are we allocating resources wisely (well that's an easy one to answer); and do we have the right organization and management structure at the various levels of government to deliver when needed?


• Do we have enough (and the right mix of) people in our armed forces to handle the demands of our national security strategy, and if not, do we ramp up the forces or adjust the strategy? If the latter, where does responding to disasters that affect the US economy and the lives and property of US residents fit within that strategy?

Katrina should force a re-examination of some of the undeclared tradeoffs that underlie many of the policies of the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress.

UPDATE:Belle Waring goes straight to the heart of the matter in her inimitable style:

Say what you like about casting blame for the unfolding tragedy in NO, the bare facts of the matter are these: America suffered a serious attack on Sept. 11, 2001. That was four years ago. I think we had all assumed that in the meantime a lot of wargaming and disaster-mitigation planning and homeland security gearup had been going on. If this is what the Federal and State governments are going to come up with when the suitcase nuke goes off in D.C., then we are well and truly f**d. [edited for family filters]

As a resident of DC, I sincerely appreciate her concern.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism