Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Motown is Joe-Town!

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The willow is too close to the house.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / A Note About Hurricane Katrina

A Note About Hurricane Katrina

by | 102 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Back in early 2010 I wrote the Concept of Operations (CONOP) for the US Army’s first cultural program, the Human Terrain System, about applying what, at the time, I was referring to as socio-cultural research, analysis, and mapping to emergency response and disaster management. This was done specifically for the founding Program Manager so that he had something to work with if US Southern Command asked for assistance from the program as part of the response to the earthquake in Haiti. I was tapped to write this for several reasons, but not least of which because I had been working (among others) for him on building out the conceptual basis for what we were actually tasked with doing for the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan and thinking ahead to other types of operations where having on site, real time socio-cultural support might be helpful. Another reason I was tasked with working on this was the conceptual/scholarly work I had done prior to going to work for the Human Terrain System, which included work on emergency response and disaster management.

In late 2009 I represented the program as an invited panelist at the St. Thomas University (Miami Lakes, FL) conference on disaster management and emergency response to terrorism, other man made disasters, and natural disasters (and yes, I was on the same panel with Max Mayfield). Some of the work I had done for that presentation made its way into the CONOP, including an analysis of where, what I would now in 2016 call, cultural operations and Engagement, would have been beneficial in the response to Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately this was written up in 2011-2012 into a longer treatment for the Army’s second cultural program – the Army Culture and Foreign Language Directorate – looking at how to apply cultural operations to facilitate humanitarian assistance, emergency management, and disaster response – regardless of the nature of the emergency or disaster  – including several case examples such as the response to Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake of 2010.

Below you’ll find an excerpt from that 2011-2012 report. In Hillary R’s first post on Hurricane Matthew she referenced Amanda Ripley’s book on surviving disasters. And while Ms. Ripley wrote an excellent book and her observations about who did and did not survive are correct, what was outside of its scope, and the scope of Hillary R’s post, is that ultimately the lack of survivability of Hurricane Katrina was really about total systemic failure at all levels of the emergency management and disaster response process. And I think that’s important to understand and its equally important to remember that the loss of life in Hurricane Katrina was preventable, but failures at the municipal, state, and Federal levels ensured they would occur. I’m adjusting the language a bit – replacing socio-cultural research, analysis, and mapping with Cultural Operations and Engagement.

Disaster Management and Emergency Response: Three Phases

In the case of responding to disasters, whether natural or man-made, disaster management specialists have identified three stages of the response: emergency, rehabilitation, and restoration(9). Conducting Cultural Operations and Engagement across all three dimensions of context, dynamic, and location would be of great use in assisting and facilitating with these disaster management responses. With greater situational awareness available from the beginning of the response and management effort, it would be possible to engage in more focused and effective response leading to better outcomes for the affected populations.

In the emergency response phase the focus is on getting to the affected area, initially assess what needs to be done, and get to the work of the assistance and response as quickly as possible. It also includes a focus on life saving missions and the delivery of emergency supplies, including medical assistance. Phase two, rehabilitation, focuses on building off of the initial response and moving towards stabilization in order to facilitate long term restorations of essential services and a return to normal routine. The focus in this phase is on restoring the host nation country (or in the case of a domestic disaster the local and state authorities) to the levels of functionality that existed prior to the disaster. This is intended to get the required infrastructure back into place and running so that the host nation can begin to provide for the health and welfare needs of the population. The third stage, restoration, is concerned with capitalizing on successes from the first two stages, consolidating them, and then expanding on them by assisting the host nation and its population with building out its infrastructure, services, and facilitating disaster proofing through hardening of vulnerable sites.

Using Cultural Operations and Engagement, and the socio-cultural information it produces for decision makers and planners, can facilitate all three phases of disaster management. For instance, in the first phase, if a Cultural Operations and Engagement team(10) goes in as soon as possible after the disaster they would be able to collect the raw data and information, while assisting the humanitarian relief efforts. Such data is important in order to facilitate identifying where everyone is in time and space (socio- cultural location).  Why they are sheltering in those locations and where they might have been sheltering prior to the disaster (socio-cultural context). And who the elites and notables are that need to be reached out to and leveraged to facilitate the relief efforts (socio-cultural dynamic). As the effort moves into the second or third phases the initial socio-cultural information is expanded and consolidated, providing further assistance to the decision makers and planners as they work to return the afflicted communities back to normal.

Conversely, if it is possible to conduct Cultural Operations and Engagement prior to a disaster occurring – either through data mining or because we have personnel working with host country partners or both, then the socio-cultural information can be used to create much more proactive responses. Socio-cultural information may make it possible for decision makers and planners to recognize at risk communities, by fusing geographic information pertaining to areas that are at risk for flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, avalanche with information about those who reside there. Having socio-cultural information during disaster response and emergency management planning would allow for a better understanding of the actual populations at risk by knowing if they are likely to or predisposed to evacuating, if they have the economic wherewithal to do so, if they have places they can go to to seek shelter, as well as who in the communities would need to be engaged in order to facilitate a safe and effective evacuation. Finally, it allows the planner to propose better locations to stage relief and assistance supplies as there is really no good reason to place them to quickly reach those that will either not be effected or will easily (or more easily) evacuate.

Hurricane Katrina

The four near miss hurricanes that threatened New Orleans in 2004 provided disaster management and emergency response personnel with a wealth of data (not only about what might happen to the physical terrain of New Orleans), but also who would and would not evacuate the city.(11) As a result it was possible well in advance of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to do a socio-cultural analysis of New Orleans relative to a potential catastrophic hurricane strike. The information was available about who would and would not evacuate. As a result it should have been possible to cross correlate that data based on ethnicity and socio-economic status, which would delineate why individuals would not evacuate (lack of available funds, lack of transportation, lack of relatives to stay with, disbelief of the threat). Such analysis would have also helped to identify the key community leaders and agents of influence who needed to be engaged in order to promote a timely and orderly evacuation. Sadly, there was no coordinated and coherent system for putting this information together, bringing it to the attention of the policy makers, and enabling more effective, more proactive, and more humane management of the preparations for the disaster and its aftermath.

If the planners and decision makers at FEMA, the State of Louisiana, and New Orleans Parish/adjacent parishes had robust socio-cultural information, derived from the cultural operations and Engagement process, available to them many problems could have been averted through the creation of a more effective preparation and evacuation plan. Additionally, high probability areas for natural disasters could be made into hardened targets in much the same manner as high value terrorist targets were hardened post 9-11. There is only so much that can be done geographically in the case of natural disasters, but the ability to improve on the effectiveness of disaster mitigation, response, resupply, and evacuation procedures is fruit that can be harvested. This can only be accomplished through a clear understanding gained by careful study of the socio-cultural and socio-economic terrain.

Access to proper socio-cultural information of greater New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina would have allowed the local authorities at New Orleans Parish and the adjacent parishes, Louisiana state officials, and FEMA to focus their relief efforts on those areas where New Orleans residents would not and could not evacuate and where they were most in jeopardy. Moreover, efforts could have been implemented well in advance of the hurricane to work with local elites and notables on creating an effective information operations (IO) campaign, rooted in the local socio-cultural milieus of New Orleans’ most vulnerable communities to push preparation for an evacuation. In this manner the first phase of disaster management, the emergency response, would have been in place and in play much sooner and much more proactively. The same goes in regard to the staging of relief supplies, equipment, and personnel. All of these could have been placed to be surged into safe areas adjacent to those deemed most at risk in order to facilitate both a more robust and orderly evacuation of the most difficult to evacuate communities in New Orleans, as well as much more effective movement of relief personnel and supplies into the worst hit areas. Finally, a better understanding of social behavior, and behavioral drivers, among people afflicted by disaster would have gone a long way towards disaggregating out those simply taking basic supplies or taking up arms for protection (regardless of community) for survival and those very few truly bad actors who took advantage of the disaster for their own enrichment. This would have enabled authorities to more carefully and successfully engage with those in need of assistance, while effectively moving against the small fraction that actually posed a threat. The implications of this are very important for two reasons: 1) it prevents the wrong reactions by the emergency responders towards the afflicted communities and 2) it prevents the commission of Information Operations fratricide by stepping on the appeals and request for emergency aid and donations.

Additionally, the proactive use of socio-cultural information would have made the actual reaction much better. Not only would the emergency response have been in place much sooner and likely been more effective, it would have had an important shaping function on the operational environment. By identifying, engaging, and working with the local communities that are at risk in advance, lines of communication are established, which has a positive Information Operations and shaping effect on the disaster response. Given that all communication is strategic communication, having established and positive communications with the right people sets positive conditions for conducting all three phases of the reactive response.

Given that none of this was done prior to Hurricane Katrina, socio-cultural information derived from the Cultural Operations and Engagement process could still have been of use in the aftermath and response to the disaster. In a reactive response situation, as opposed to a proactive prevention one, Cultural Operations and Engagement may be as or even more important. Robust socio- cultural information tethered to the Hurricane Katrina response would have allowed the disaster response managers to surge out teams of personnel with law enforcement and emergency responders in the initial emergency response phase to determine where the location of the affected New Orleans’ communities were in time and space, which elites, notables, and power brokers were either still in those communities and could be leveraged or who could be quickly brought back. This would have allowed for the facilitation of interactions between the emergency responders and the survivors, as well as determine the context – including the basics of shelter, nutrition, and hydration – of the wants, needs, and expectations of the various New Orleans’ populations going forward from the initial response. By having this information the disaster management response to Hurricane Katrina could have more efficiently and effectively moved through all three divisions of the response: emergency, rehabilitation, and restoration.

Finally, it is necessary to secure the information produced by the Cultural Operations and Engagement process in less vulnerable areas so that the hard won knowledge is not lost. Rather it is safeguarded and available to the emergency responders at the tactical and operational levels, as well as to the disaster managers at the high operational to strategic levels.

9 Nancy Mock and J.E. McGovern (undated power point). “Contingency Planning for Foreign Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.” SOUTHCOM Lessons Learned From Recent Crises in Latin America. Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance.

10 A Cultural Operations and Engagement team should be made up of a team leader with operational experience in emergency response/ disaster management, a research director to coordinate the cultural operations process, several research managers to facilitate data collection and analysis, and a number of field researchers and analysts – many of whom should speak the local language if deployed abroad. It is possible to combine the team leader and research director positions, as well as the field researcher and analyst ones if necessary.

11 Hurricane Pam. Global Security. http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hurricane-pam.htm.

 

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  1. 1.

    Ruviana

    Wow! Everybody’s bigfooting everybody! Adam’s bigfooted Mayhew so fast that neither one had comments! (Until this one obvs).

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruviana: When I started copying and pasting the excerpt Richard wasn’t drafting yet. It was an unintentional bigfoot. His post is excellent, I highly recommend everyone read it! And I emailed him to apologize as soon as I realized a bigfooting had occurred.

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Steve in the ATL: I did the title before I started the excerpt and realized I needed the conceptual/definition section on disaster management/emergency response, not just the hurricane katrina section. I need to go back and fix the title because I forgot to do so before hitting publish.

  5. 5.

    RaflW

    So I’m just gonna put a shameless plug here for an international human rights and aid agency that does amazing work. They have been in Haiti since the earthquake in 2010.

    Their model is to have just a handful of people in the countries/regions where they work, such as the Philippines, Darfur region of Sudan, Haiti and quite a few others, and they fund local on-the-ground groups that are run by and for local people from marginalized groups – minorities, women-run orgs, people supporting LGBT work etc.

    They have a new disaster appeal up for Haiti. I heard on the radio this afternoon that at least 100 have died there from the hurricane, and the death toll certainly will rise as more remote areas can report in.

    The group is affiliated with Unitarian Universalism. It’s similar to the American Friends Service Committee. Some of you may have seen Sharpe’s War (a Ken Burns film) on PBS last month, that was in essence the forming of the UU Service Committee.

    So if any of you feel called to make a contribution to genuinely local, self-directed aid in Haiti post Matthew, here’s how.

    *Disclosure: I serve as a volunteer/donor on an advisory committee to the UUSC.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    I have only barely skimmed this post so far. That said:

    Once again, I am totally knocked out by the expertise, erudition, and passion of all the front-pagers at this place — not to mention the incredible variety of interests from FPs and commenters alike.

    Politics. Pets. Gardens, both vegetable and floral. Carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC. Race relations. National and domestic security. Music, movies, art, theatre. The law. Medicine and the intricacies of health care delivery. Sports of all kinds. Photography. Thoughtful and critical analysis of the media. Swearing like a sailor away from his home church for the first time in his life. Grammar Nazis and linguists of every persuasion. Recipes and home decorating tips. Compassionate friends. Hilariously funny. People peacefully in recovery and people joyously not in recovery. People dealing with dreadful illnesses in themselves or loved ones. People who are scared, people who are confident, people who just plug along from day to day.

    I’ve been coming here for just a little under a decade. Can’t imagine my life without Balloon Juice.

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    TL;DR is pretty much the entire deserting coward malasstration approach to what Adam wrote about anything. The Katrina disaster was made worse by the GOP’s inherent hatred of government and what government can do if you allow some professionals to be professional and plan in advance for just about anything.

    You’d think that they would have learned something Hurricane Andrew and the FEMA response of another Rethuglican idiot who SHOULD have known better, but turned FEMA over to a political crony and the result was Florida had a fresh reminder of what Rethug competence was all about.

  12. 12.

    Anoniminous

    And it’s Big Foot Night here at Balloon Juice, when all the FP’ers face-off to see who can post the final thread for the evening.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    Last night there was a single thread up for hours that went more than 400 comments, mostly about the proper pronunciation of Nevada. Now it’s a day’s worth of threads in minutes.

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: This. I am constantly impressed by how much Juicers know about so many subjects.

  19. 19.

    frosty

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:

    I am totally knocked out by the expertise, erudition, and passion of all the front-pagers at this place — not to mention the incredible variety of interests from FPs and commenters alike.

    I second this wholeheartedly. It’s such a joy reading info from people who know what they’re talking about.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: No. The greater Tampa Bay area – Hillsborough and Pinellas counties; Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater (and a host of small municipalities in Pinellas County) are forecast for winds gusting up to 35-40 miles per hour and rain. The only real worry in Tampa is that South Tampa floods if someone sneezes outside. This has been going on my entire life (I grew up in Tampa and was assigned down there in the summer of 2015) and no one is willing to pay the minor tax increase or spend the money or be inconvenienced to fix the drainage and sewerage issues in South Tampa. Since South Tampa floods every time there’s a decent thunderstorm, your nephew should know what to do.

  24. 24.

    Hillary Rettig

    Thanks Adam! Would it be fair to say that in situations where the DMER isn’t good, one’s personal response to disaster becomes even more crucial? And how can a civilian tell when and where good DMER is in place?

  27. 27.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I was afraid it might come across as overly emo and mushy, but decided to hit “post comment” button anyway. Never fear, I shall soon return to my mob enforcer bitchy persona.

  28. 28.

    Hillary Rettig

    @Villago Delenda Est: Yes and right now we have the noxious spectacle of GOP governors who deny climate change demanding federal emergency funds for their climate-change affected states.

  29. 29.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: And it showed, because there are people having withdraw shakes from no recent Snack Team Six update.

    Ammon was on the stand the other day, and was saying that the evil oppressive feds forced them to go 2nd Amendment by stepping on the 1st. Or whatevs.

  30. 30.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Hillary Rettig: What I loved was Florida INSISTED they knew better than the Feds what needed to happen in the Okeechobee drainage area, let them manage it, they did, they screwed it up by doing the opposite of what the Feds suggested, because profit for private interests who don’t give a damn about the environment, and now they’re asking for money to fix it.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: You’re allowed. Your name is the most frequent 3-word phrase on here, according to M4, so you do more than your share. I appreciate how much time you spend in the comments explaining even more!

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Hillary Rettig: Yes, yes it is. What made the Katrina response – at all levels – so unconscionably bad was, as I noted up top, they had a lot of data about who would and wouldn’t evacuate as a result of the near misses of 2004 that wasn’t utilized. Another is that FEMA continually updates three worst case natural disaster scenarios and responses: massive hurricane hitting New Orleans, massive hurricane hitting the Tampa Bay area (Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties), and massive earthquake in the San Francisco area. They are continuously updated because, up until Katrina, each of these events was considered to be overdue and because each of these areas are very, very difficult to evacuate because of the interaction between infrastructure, the human geography, and the physical geography.

    To answer your other question: the best thing one can do is follow the updates from the National Hurricane Center, make sure one has 3-7 days of supplies in case they have to shelter in place, and have a plan in place (where to go, where to stay, what to do with one’s pet or pets if they have them, things like that) in case they can and do evacuate.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: I was waiting for an on the scene report from our embedded commentator to arrive – the file didn’t attach the first time and I didn’t get the second attempt from our embed till this AM. I intend to put the post up later this evening.

  35. 35.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman:

    …the drainage and sewerage issues in South Tampa …

    Now you’ve hit my area of expertise. Looks to me after a quick search like Tampa doesn’t have combined sewers, so if it’s flooding that’s the problem, it’s strictly a drainage issue. (There’s two systems: sanitary SEWERS and storm DRAINS)* If sewers back up because they’re old and they get a lot of I&I (infiltration and inflow) from groundwater and stormwater, then yes, it could be a sewer issue. The cause is basically stormwater though.

    * Of course, when I worked in Virginia they were called storm sewers. Go figure.

    /pedant off/

  41. 41.

    raven

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s just the first few days of Katrina. The only folks that looked very good were the Coast Guard, the Gator Navy and Wal Mart. The stuff about Blackwater (or a similar private security ) out fit in the Garden District is pretty intense.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    So far, my family is on the opposite side of the state from the storm (Ft. Meyers), but if it does do that swing around to the Gulf that some people are predicting …

  47. 47.

    Gin & Tonic

    Hey, Adam, I was scanning some threads from last week when I was on vacation, and some people took you up on an offer you made to send a report you wrote about the Maidan movement. If that offer is still open, could you shoot me a copy? The e-mail associated with my nym is OK to use.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Sure, if you don’t get mad at me for occassionally defaulting to “the Ukraine”. I didn’t do it too often, but it made it through the proofing and editing process…

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Let’s have another fight about whether English is Germanic or romance!

    I don’t think we’ve yet exhausted the varying pronunciations of “Nevada.” You’ll just have to wait your turn.

  60. 60.

    Corner Stone

    I fucking love that tie BriWi is wearing, but isn’t he about the worst news celeb to address something as serious as the damage this hurricane is doing/has done?

  65. 65.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:

    Swearing like a sailor away from his home church for the first time in his life.

    Glad I could be of fucking assistance. Although, I don’t have a church and have been swearing mightily since before I was a sailor. Which seems like 3 or 4 lifetimes ago.

  66. 66.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Let’s have another fight about whether English is Germanic or romance!

    That was even a thing? It’s pretty clear that English is a Germanic language. English shares grammar with the other Germanic languages, not with Romance languages. In discussing language families, structure trumps vocabulary. Saying otherwise is like saying that Hurricane Michael is a liberal plot to shore up climate change.

  68. 68.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes. Hurricane Michael. Matthew is so mundane. (Obviously I destroyed too many brain cells in my youth. I’m reading the Godfather again, and I’m at the Michael in hiding in Sicily part again. Love the movie, but love the book more.)

  71. 71.

    muddy

    Something you often don’t hear about in regards to Katrina was that it was at the end of the month. All those old and disabled people would not have any funds to get out of town, and by the 3rd it was too late. At least this hurricane is the first week of the month.

  75. 75.

    Lyrebird

    @Steve in the ATL: Oh I thought the kibbitzing would start not with a revival of the language-origin debate but with some more complaints that Adam writes like someone… (drumroll) who’s worked for the DoD! How astonishing!

    Not sure which I find funnier.

    And thanks for the kumbaya moments anyhow, I could use some!

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @muddy: This was a huge issue. There were significant numbers of folks that didn’t have the economic means to evacuate. This includes money to go and transportation – either personal or commercial.

  81. 81.

    Mary G

    Humanity for Hillary has a video up of dancers celebrating #pantsuitpower. I didn’t love the song, but the choreography is excellent. At one point half the dancers stop and put their hands on their hearts while the other half kneel, then they change over.

  85. 85.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: On a quick skim, there are a few jarring misspellings/mis-transliterations. It’s Transdnistria, for instance (for being on the other side of the Dnister river.) And Tymoshenko. But I did read your caveat. I’ll read the report more carefully tomorrow

  86. 86.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: I’d be interested in hearing your opinion on the report since you appear to have first person, on the ground experience with that part of the world.

  87. 87.

    Regnad Kcin

    @Villago Delenda Est: Not entirely, and here is the brilliance of the Adam Silvermans of the world (well, there really is only one, I know) — the authoritarian personality loves government if it comes in the tasty, flaky wrapper of The Troops.

    So… I say we re-brand HHS, DOE, etc as additional ‘armed’ forces.

  90. 90.

    cynthia ackerman

    I was incident commander for a Type One emergency, which is what Katrina. Sandy, Deepwater Horizons (aka the Gulf oil spill), and the Spaceshuttle Columbia disaster were.

    Adam is spot on in describing the scope and complexity of response.

    In the end, communities are the measure of success in these cases.

    Did remediation leave affected communitites whole, or have different objectives been met in service of this goal?

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: I was using what was in the sourced reporting. I do not speak Russian, other than a few words or phrases. The purpose on this was to cut through the truly horrid news reporting to lay out some important information, points, and caveats for senior uniformed personnel that had limited time overall and no time in specific to drill into this on their own.

  92. 92.

    chris

    For those interested. the invaluable Guardian has a hurricane live blog here

    ETA: From which we learn that Rick Scott is a dick. He won’t extend voter registration because the offices are closed.

  97. 97.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Thanks. I’m genuinely curious as to what you think. I’d had a chance to speak to one of my students, who is a Special Operations officer from one of the former Soviet Republics that is now part of NATO, as I was working my way through the draft to get his take on what was happening. And I ran the final draft passed one of our Eastern European specialists at USAWC and he thought it did its job well, but it will be nice to have someone who has had a lot of time on the ground tell me what he thinks.

  102. 102.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: No rush on your end. I spent several days pulling the source material, then letting it percolate, then drafting, then redrafting, then having a couple of smart folks – one who’d been assigned to Germany when it was divided – go through it and make suggestions for revisions, then making revisions, then another round of proofing. You get the idea. Again – no worries and no rush.

Comments are closed.