Just a Hunch

It's just a hunch, but I think President Bush is going to declare Federal martial law within a day or so. There is no other way to begin to restore order in New Orleans than martial law backed by Federal troops with "shoot to kill" orders. It will be a PR disaster for the administration, which is why I think they've been avoiding it today, but a necessary first step.

Watch for the usual race demagogues to jump all over it, and the PC liberal dupes. It will turn ugly quickly. The press will lap it up. Conflict is their cream. Every Al Sharpton wannabe will leap at this opportunity.

News coverage inside the city will, of course, stop as a consequence of martial law, except for the expected idiots who will go in anyway. The MSM will be all over this, with the eagerness you'd expect of wolves smelling blood. We've been largely spared pictures of the dead from the flood waters, I've seen some shots of dead around the Superdome though, but that will change once folks begin to get shot by Federal troops in action. Then we'll see lots of pictures of the killed. There will be comparisons to military action in Iraq. It will be vicious and divisive in ways the War on Terror hasn't gotten to. The "Vietnam redux" theme that has been bubbling all through coverage of the War, that is the lens through which the Left sees this War, will be trotted out anew. Comparisons will be made to police overeaction and brutality in the Sixties; scenes of Federal troops herding citizens at gunpoint will be ubiquitous.

I fear I am right on this.