A week ago, I speculated (based largely on common sense) that a primary reason for the delay in calling in the troops was a fear of having the responsibility for pulling triggers:

What's being forgotten (except by those who'd have ultimate responsibility) is that shooting poor black people who are struggling for their lives won't play well on TV. Bush doesn't want to be the fall guy. Neither, it seems, does the Louisiana governor.

Accepting responsibility for the actual pulling of triggers which will kill Americans is not an easy thing.

Something easier to avoid than do. It's tough for me to point the finger of blame.

I'm surprised that it took a week to appear in the news, but I'm now seeing apparent confirmation of my suspicions in a carefully-worded article in the New York Times:

As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.

While combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.

But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.

"I need everything you have got," Ms. Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Monday, after the storm hit.

In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. "Nobody told me that I had to request that," Ms. Blanco said. "I thought that I had requested everything they had. We were living in a war zone by then."

By Wednesday, she had asked for 40,000 soldiers.

The call never came, administration officials said, in part because military officials believed Guard troops would get to the stricken region faster and because administration civilians worried that there could be political fallout if federal troops were forced to shoot looters.

Louisiana officials were furious that there was not more of a show of force, in terms of relief supplies and troops, from the federal government in the middle of last week. As the water was rising in New Orleans, the governor repeatedly questioned whether Washington had started its promised surge of federal resources.

"We needed equipment," Ms. Blanco said in an interview. "Helicopters. We got isolated."

Aides to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored. (Emphasis added.)

It's easier for me to speculate about these things, of course, than it is to see evidence that I was right. The responsibility would almost be more than I could bear, except I'm sure someone else noted this before I did.

That's one of the cool things about the blogosphere. Whenever you're right about something, you can be sure someone else was too. Ditto when you're wrong.

Avoids having to grapple with things like having sole responsibility.... I wouldn't envy being either a president or a governor in a situation like this, and I like to think I'd place the decision ahead of my political future. The reality of power doesn't always work that way, of course.

But we lowly bloggers don't have to worry about the responsibilties of power.

(I don't mean to moralize so much as state a fact of life.)

MORE: Jeff Goldstein analyzes the above New York Times piece, and thinks Blanco is far more culpable than Bush. His conclusion:

Bottom line, from what I can tell, is that you have a Governor who doesn’t know the law, is confused about request protocols, and who—in spite of all this— refuses to give up the authority necessary to make it legally possible for her to get what it is she wanted and her state needed.

For its part, the Administration had to decide, in light of those facts, how best to overcome the legal obstacles thrown up by Ms Blanco’s dithering and recalcitrance.

At least, I think that’s what I’m getting out of this.

(Via Glenn Reynolds.)

And the more I think about it, the fact that Bush considered (and then ruled out) doing something so drastic speaks rather well of him.