Paul McHale Quotations

We need to be convinced that a dereliction of character has now been repaired and this type of deceit won't happen again,

Early situational awareness was poor, a problem that should have been corrected following identical damage assessment challenges during Hurricane Andrew,

We will be deploying into New Orleans a force the size of the New Orleans police department each day, every day, for the next three days. That is a remarkable movement of law enforcement capability into an area that clearly needs augmentation and reinforcement,

We performed well, but we intend to get better,

DoD felt a sense of urgency and acted upon it.

Could we have physically moved combat forces into an American city, without the governor's consent, for purposes of using those forces - untrained at that point in law enforcement - for law enforcement duties? Yes.

Katrina taught us we can't rely on cable news broadcasts and early written reports to give an accurate assessment of the loss.

With that drawdown toward the end of the week we recognize that the mission of Joint Task Force-Katrina is now approaching what we believe to be a successful conclusion,

U.S. military forces executed the largest, fastest, most comprehensive and most responsive civil support mission ever. In a domestic relief operation unprecedented in scale, over 72,000 federal military and National Guard forces flowed into the Gulf Coast region over a 12-day period to assist fellow Americans in distress.

We anticipate providing from the Department of Defense a 500-bed mobile hospital. That will be deployed in the New Orleans area.