The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday urged the Pentagon to review laws that limit the use of US troops to restore order after a disasters like Hurricane Katrina or a terror attack.
"The only entity in the United States that has the personnel, the equipment, the training and the logistical capacity to lend support to the National Guard and other state entities in an emergency of this scale is the Department of Defence," Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner told Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a letter released by his office.
He said the hurricane was followed by looting and disorder, partly because state and local authorities were unable to cope with the crisis, which he described as the "greatest natural disaster to hit the United States in a century."
President George W. Bush has come under fierce criticism for the slow pace of federal intervention to help save people trapped by the flooding in New Orleans.
Warner, a former Navy secretary who has repeatedly raised this issue since the September 11, 2001 attacks, said he did not fault local and state officials because they were confronting a nearly unprecedented crisis.
But he said the military clearly had a role to play.
He urged Rumsfeld to conduct a thorough review of the legal framework governing a president's use of active duty US troops to restore public order in the event of a disaster like Katrina, other public health emergencies, terrorist incidents and other situations.
He said Congress would conduct its own reviews, and he would recommend at least changing some of the wording of current statutes, which include terms like "insurrection."
"The president should not have to worry about misperceptions by the public based on outdated wording that does not accurately describe what the armed forces may be doing in a particular emergency," Warner said.
Warner named the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from doing domestic law enforcement in most cases, as well as laws that require the federal government to pay for National Guard deployments, even while they remain under the command and control of the states.
General Peter Pace, designated as the next chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, last week also called for the laws to be examined to ensure the military could be engaged as effectively as possible.