editorial comment Easier to fight the war on drugs than to do real work.

Not since The Spartans at Thermopylae have a group of people displayed such courage under pressure as the New Orleans police department, the force's chief said last night at an emotional press conference. Only a few cowards, Eddie Compass said, had quit and run.

The outburst invoking loyal heroism, delivered with Jesse Jackson at his side, came in the wake of news that two of his officers had killed themselves and up to another 200 had apparently gone absent without leave. They were said to have been alarmed and dismayed at becoming a target of snipers and looters. One of their number had been shot, not fatally, in the head last week.

"All you could find was a few cowards," said Mr Compass, rounding on the media. When asked how many "cowards" he was referring to, he replied: "We don't know the numbers, we're doing a roll call now."

Mr Compass has become increasingly angry at rumours that his officers were fading under pressure. This was his first public rebuttal of the charges of mass desertion.

"I'm a street cop, not a bureaucrat, but if I wasn't a street cop a lot of officers would have been killed," he said. "We did not lose one officer in battle."

Describing conditions for his officers in New Orleans, he said: "We were sleeping on the streets. I had the same underwear on for five days."

Mr Compass described the police operation as "miraculous", considering the conditions they were working in. They were unable to communicate with each other because their radios were not working and they had to wade through contaminated water under fire from snipers hiding in the dark.

"A small group of nefarious individuals, preying on the weak", was how he described the people who had fired on his officers and on other members of the rescue operation.

The officers will be assessed to see how many of them are able to stay on duty. Mr Compass promised that he was not resigning despite rumours to the contrary, and he believed most of his officers would continue to serve in the force.

The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, earlier said he was rotating the city's police officers after concerns about their physical and psychological state. "You can't ingest this kind of madness for seven days," he said.

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