Task Force Katrina

America's magnificent cavalry rides to NOLA's rescue:

The scenes of the Hurricane Katrina disaster are beyond horrific. As they play across our television screens, they look more like the pictures of last December's Southwest Asia tsunami than anything we've ever seen in America. No one can even collect the dead, because an increasingly desperate search for the living goes on into the night. As the Red Cross and FEMA organize disaster relief, and as Americans reach into their hearts and their pockets to donate to help fellow Americans, there is another part of America working hard.

There is one thing the tsunami and Katrina have in common: our armed services -- including the National Guard -- are doing what no other force in the world can do, bringing rescue and relief to those most in need. And somehow, the Big Dogs again came running without the help or supervision of the U.N., France, Germany or Belgium.

The National Guard already has boots on the ground in Louisiana helping rescue people and doing their part to help restore order. (It can do that because it's operating under state mobilization orders, not federal ones.) States of emergency exist, but as National Guard Bureau chief Lt. Gen. Steven Blum told me Wednesday evening, there have been no declarations of martial law. Blum said he already had 11,000 men on the job, and was supplementing that force with another 11,000 within the next 24 to 48 hours. I asked him if he was short of people or resources, and his answer was what you'd expect, in time of war. "We have 320,000 more men if we need them." Steve Blum has a deep bench to wave at if he needs more people and equipment. That's a pretty unlikely event because Joint Task Force Katrina under the command of Army Lt. Gen. Russ Honore became operational on Wednesday.

May God bless them all---liberators abroad, heroes at home.