"You might recall that General Tommy Franks raised the issue recently, as a result of a hypothetical terrorist attack. Is he another "Leftist Looney"?"

I get the strange feeling that you believe that there is something wrong with being able to impose martial law. Meaning that, say a city or a nation should not plan for the possiblity of imposing martial law if the situation warrants it- merely because martial law is bad thing and is something which is never neccessary.
If there is a major biological attack, and if there is not procedures of under what circumstance martial law are neccessary and how exactly it should be executed, millions of people could die as a result of a slow and incorrect response to this fairly unlikely [though possible] attack. It's also possible that without proper preparation, declarations of martial law may be declared by the political leadership in situation which do not require it. Obviously if unprepared, the panic in any emergency can easily result in exponentially more life and property losses than the actual event causing the panic- this particularly true in a biological attack and any indecision/inaction has huge consequences, as recently proven by China's unprepareness to the SARS outbreak.