Katrina Response Mismanagement

[scaeagles]

I find this to be quite enlightening. There is so much criticism of Bush for never admitting to mistakes or taking responsibility. So he says, literally, that he accepts full responsibility for the failings of the federal response, but that's not good enough. Now it's too little, too late. So why ever do it in the first place?

All I know is it's more than the pathetic governor and mayor have offered up. All they can do is continue to point fingers and take no responsibility themselves for their lack of preparation and execution when it mattered.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

The real crime was that is was lousy oral sex.

Well, he ruined a perfectly good cigar, too. Although, never having smoked one that was.....treated in that fashion, I guess that's premature for me to say.

[Gemini Cricket]

Today, Bush admitted that his administration made a mistake.
It's their first one, isn't it?

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I find this to be quite enlightening. There is so much criticism of Bush for never admitting to mistakes or taking responsibility. So he says, literally, that he accepts full responsibility for the failings of the federal response, but that's not good enough. Now it's too little, too late. So why ever do it in the first place?

Hey, all I know is that it wasn't that long ago that he was talking about rebuilding Trent Lott's house and patting the director of FEMA on the back for a job well done. At that point, he was clueless. Now, two weeks later, after the damage was done, he "takes responsibility". Well, what about all of the other cronies in charge of FEMA? Why do they still have a job? I don't want to hear him say he takes responsibility, I want him to actually take it. And not by investigating himself either. I want to see a bipartisan investigation of every aspect of this failure, from the President and his appointees to the Governor and Mayor and everyone in between. This problem needs to be fixed quickly.

I'll wait to see what his actions are. If he does the right thing and really fixes this problem, then I'll cut him some slack. Right now though, it just seems like words spoken in an attempt to slow his plummeting ratings.

[scaeagles]

To go along with ,y recent post of how all the governor and mayor can do is point fingers, now Governor Blanco is complaining that FEMA isn't collecting the dead fast enough.

Umm....would those be the dead that you failed to evacuate while they were alive? The ones you told in the published emergency plan that they were on their own? The ones that could have been taken out on the hundreds of busses that were available? Yeah - that's the feds fault, too.

Of course, it has just been announced that a large portion of the city - including the French Quarter and a large portion of the business district - will be open again to the public by the end of the week. I'd say that's moving pretty well. Of course, no credit should go to the feds - it's all too little, too late.

[innerSpaceman]

MB makes a great point. While I really do think it's a good thing that Bush verbally accepts responsibity at his Buck-Stops-Here Oval Office desk, I would really like to see actions backing up those words. It is indeed one thing to say you take responsibility and another to actually take that responsibility.

I'll give him some time before judging him on that score, but cronyism would have to be wiped out of every federal agency, FEMA removed from the auspices of Homeland Security, tons more heads on pikes to spend more decapitated time with their families, financial directions reversed to fund disaster prevention instead of mop-up, and the emergency-preparedness of this nation drastically revised from top to bottom and demonstrated to be adequate to the task.

That would be responsibility. Other than that is platitudes.



And yeah, the Louisiana and New Orleans governments suck, too. But, as I'm from California, that's not my province of legitimate complaint. For the record though, I disapprove of the lametard way they handled this crisis.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Umm....would those be the dead that you failed to evacuate while they were alive? The ones you told in the published emergency plan that they were on their own? The ones that could have been taken out on the hundreds of busses that were available? Yeah - that's the feds fault, too.

Who is saying that this is entirely the Feds fault? Has anyone posted these arguments? I agree with iSm. I can't do anything about the Mayor of NO or the Governor of LA. That is up to the people that live there. My concern is, will we actually learn from our mistakes and fix a broken system...for real? I hope every Mayor and Governor in the US got a wake-up call here because I'm sure there is a hell of a lot more of them that are completely unprepared for a disaster.

But the federal government has to be prepared to step up immediately if things fail or get overwhelmed at the state and city level. They have to be prepared, authoritative, well-informed, and decisive. They were none of those things here and people died as a result, just like they died as the result of the Mayor and Governor's leadership. There is plenty of blame to go around and I think everyone understands that. So why does the right keep saying over and over again that we blame everything, including the hurricane itself, on the president?

That just isn't happening.

[Ghoulish Delight]

What MBC said. I think if you go back and find my posts, you'll see a lot of things like "every level" and "from top to bottom" when I'm talking about what went wrong. I'll scoff nearly as loudly if and when I hear their appologies.

But 1) LA and NO officials have little to do with me and 2) I know little about their track records. So yeah, from my perspective, I really really hope that focusing on Bush will continue to wake people up to the fact that our country elected an ineffectual leader, to put it nicely, and that it won't happen again. It's not about right or left, it's about incompetance. And that fact that Georgie is admitting a mistake (notice he still hasn't said he himself made any mistakes, just that he takes responsibilities for other people's mistakes) when, as MBC points out, he has NEVER done that before shows just how badly things went. Because if he can stand in front of the world and continue to talk about Iraq in glowing terms, things have to really be well beyond "in the sh!tter" for him to do such a thing.

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Of course, it has just been announced that a large portion of the city - including the French Quarter and a large portion of the business district - will be open again to the public by the end of the week. I'd say that's moving pretty well. Of course, no credit should go to the feds - it's all too little, too late.

Oh geez, you're killing me over here LOL

Why in the world would anybody need to congratulate Bush because portions of the city that only saw slight damage are re-opening?

OK... I'm game. I'll give it a shot.

Thank you, Mr. President, for insuring that the original French settlement that became New Orleans was constructed on high ground hundreds of years before your birth. Way to plan ahead there, guy!

Feel better?

[wendybeth]

There is no doubt that the state and local government dropped the ball here, but isn't that where FEMA is supposed to step in? When it's too big for the locals to handle, or the infrastructure is so damaged they can't? The entire Gulf Coast area was practically blown off the friggen map, and he was still on vacation..... Still, I suppose I should cut him some slack- after all, didn't the media say that everything was okay? (Still can't find where they said that, but I'll keep looking).