I quote Col. W. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

""Federal military personnel may also be used pursuant to the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C., section 5121, in times of natural disaster upon request from a state governor. "

This quotation is from a commentary on the "Posse Comitatus Act" of 1878."

I quote the SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LIPTON in The New York Times

"A 1878 law restricts active-duty military forces from performing domestic law enforcement duties."

I don't know the posse comitatus act from an opossum, but I already had the impression that the Shane and Lipton article was repackaged Bush administration talking points added to balance the actual reporting in the same issue (not to mention an editorial or two). the headline "Governement Saw Flood Risk but Not Levee Failure" and the extensive exegesis of the difference between "Topping" and "breaching" made it clear that the point of the article was "it all depends on the definition of breaching" or "Bush said something amazingly ignorant and dishonest on live TV but a really smart spinmeister can obfuscate the issue."

Does the New York Times think that balance requires them to repeat in their own voice demonstrably false claims made by Bush administration flaks ? The question answers itself.

Update: It doesn't depend on the definition of breaching. To refute the legalistic defence of Bush's absurd claim, which defence is based on distinguishing "breaching" and "topping" it is necessary to find an explicit warning that breaching was a threat. I didn't recall the word in the many vivid descriptions of how New Orleans could be flooded which I have recently read.
Eric Umansky quotes "a story last year from the AP, nabbed from Nexis: "Officials have warned that if a major hurricane hits New Orleans, thousands of people could be killed and the city could be flooded for weeks as flood waters breach the levees ringing the city."

Hm the next line of defence might be "It all depends on how you define 'would'." That is people anticipated that the levees could be breached but no one said that given a storm like Katrina they certainly would be breached. After someone with Nexis refutes that, the final line of defence will be "anyone" means "George Bush," which, of course, is the way he sees the world.

Update 2. The distinction between overtopping and breaching of earthen levees is totally bogus. An earthen levee which is overtopped will soon be breached. The levee that failed was a berm of earth topped by a concrete wall. The legalistic defence of Bush's idiotic claim was, unsurprisingly, inconsistent with the facts, not only with the Nexis record but also with current events.

The swollen lake backed into the 17th Street Canal and surged over a section of its earthen levee on the east side, a catastrophic phenomenon known as "overtopping."
"Erosion occurs rapidly," said civil engineer Rick Stephenson of the University of Missouri at Rolla. "You have a concrete retaining wall on top in some areas, and it just collapses the levee as the earth foundation is eroded."

update 2: A rather more thorough critique over at mediamatters