"Is there a circumstance in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency? Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case," Bush said as he heard from the joint task force running the reaction to Rita.

"Is there a natural disaster which -- of a certain size -- that would then enable the defense department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort," he said at Randolph Air Force Base here.

"That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about," said Bush, who paid a steep political price for the widely criticized response to killer Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans on August 29 and left most of the city of half-a-million people under water.

One of Bush's briefers, Major General John White, told the president the lack of coordination in search and rescue efforts in New Orleans after Katrina had led to a "train wreck."

Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,000 people dead in Louisiana and neighboring Mississippi and the government under fire for failing to quickly mobilize relief efforts for beleagured residents of New Orleans.

"We need a national plan," pleaded White, who walked Bush through a slide-by-slide video presentation of the response to Rita, showing him the movement of military assets in the powerful storm's aftermath.

Bush, on his third day of military briefings in the wake of Rita, attended church on the base before flying to Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, for a first-hand look at the response efforts there.

Bush first suggested that the Pentagon ought to have a much broader role in the event of major natural disasters when he gave a prime-time speech in a deserted New Orleans square on September 15.

On Friday, Bush traveled to the Colorado headquarters of the Pentagon's Northern Command, which was created after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to protect the US territory.

"Part of the reason I've come down here, and part of the reason I went to Northcom, is to better understand how the federal government can plan and surge equipment to mitigate natural disasters," he said.

Bush said the briefing here had given him "precisely the kind of information that I'll take back to Washington to help all of us understand how we can do a better job in coordinating federal, state, and local response."

Hurricane Rita hammered Texas and Louisiana early Saturday, downing trees and power lines and causing widespread flooding but failing to match the catastrophic damage done by Katrina nearly a month ago.