# Have they no sense of decency? (Criticising Bush for Katarina)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 31, 2005, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423 "2005-08-31T14:25:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 7
### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/121 "2005-09-02T16:52:26Z")
> [@plnnr](#):
>
> Evidently there aren’t any national media outlets in Washington DC. They really ought to think about doing something about that.
It might not be a bad idea if FEMA paid someone to watch CNN and MSNBC all day to pick up on things that the media finds out before anyone else.
---
### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/122 "2005-09-02T16:58:02Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Are you implying if Kerry or Gore where the President this would not of happened? Because if thats what your implying I think I need to invest in there new anti-hurricane machine I knew nothing about previously.
No one was going to stop the hurricane.
However, Clinton was the first president in decades to move toward placing FEMA on a professional basis. Bush replaced the Clinton FEMA director (who had experience with disaster management) with a buddy who was a good campaign organizer who suggested that his replacement be another buddy whose expertise was fundraising.
Under this adminstration, the theory that “privatization is always best” was implemented, leading to a reduction of the FEMA disaster budget, the postponement of FEMA projects as the government went through a laborious (and not always successful) bid letting process, the dismissal of a lot of FEMA management who had hands-on experience dealing with disasters, and the abolition of the department within FEMA that Clinton had created to analyze and plan for future disasters (a department which earned high marks for having plans in place to deal with several of the hurricanes that dealt blows to the Carolinas in the late 1990s).
The Bush administration also merged FEMA into Homeland Security, then canceled several projects including the rebuilding of the NO levees in order to keep the HS budget from looking too large.
Would the _hurricane_ have been as bad under Kerry? Certainly.
Would the _disaster_ have been as bad? Not likely.
---
### Author:  [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/123 "2005-09-02T17:00:51Z")
> [@Abbie Normal](#):
>
> Are you implying if Kerry or Gore where the President this would not of happened? Because if thats what your implying I think I need to invest in there new anti-hurricane machine I knew nothing about previously.
As you should well understand, I have implied nothing of the sort, and this comment is incredibly silly.
If you know there is a potential for a disaster, you do your best to prepare for it. If you don’t, you take personal responsibility for it. It’s really quite simple. Please read the thread and the links I’ve provided which clearly describe how Bush dismantled protections within FEMA that would have helped to mitigate the effects of the problem. Please also stop with silly strawmen about preventing a hurricane, if you are able.
Here’s a simple example. James Lee Witt was the head of FEMA under Clinton.
[http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12528233.htm](http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12528233.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> Being prepared for a disaster is basic emergency management, disaster experts say.
>
> For example, in the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby, said James Lee Witt, who was FEMA director under President Clinton.
>
> Federal officials said a hospital ship would leave from Baltimore on Friday.
>
> “These things need to be planned and prepared for; it just doesn’t look like it was,” said Witt, a former Arkansas disaster chief who won bipartisan praise on Capitol Hill during his tenure.
Steps that would NOT have prevented the hurricane, but WOULD HAVE prevented some suffering of the victims of the hurricane, were not taken. Steps that were anticipated and prepared for under the previous administration.
Personal accoutability. Some have it, some don’t.
> [@](#):
>
> Was FEMA supposed to be aware that once tragedy struck the people would resort to anarchy thus blocking aid efforts? If FEMA did what they _could_ of done to enforce order to get the aid in, they would be getting bashed even worse.
FEMA _used_ to be aware that people needed basic necessities immediately after a disaster. FEMA _used_ to know that social disorder would arise if people had to fend for these necessities on their own. FEMA _used_ to take some degree of responsibility for these things, rather than blaming the victims of the disaster for their circumstances, like the current head of the organization recently did, and like you are now.
> [@](#):
>
> And yes if Kerry where president right now, some of the blind conservatives would be trying to find a way to blame him, just as the blind liberals are attacking Bush now. But that doesn’t make it right.
Conservatives sadly seem excessively dependent on this argument-crutch recently: “Oh yeah, well if X were true, you liberals would still blame Bush.” It really is pathetic, and does nothing for your argument. You should try to find some more logical method of communicating.
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### Author:  [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/124 "2005-09-02T17:08:00Z")
Had Bush but called on his supporters in the fundamentalist Christian right-wing of the party (Robertson, et al) to pray hard enough, surely the hurricane would have been diverted.
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### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/125 "2005-09-02T17:14:05Z")
Robertson should have been able to steer that thing right to Caracas.
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### Author:  [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/126 "2005-09-02T17:40:55Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#):
>
> Conservatives sadly seem excessively dependent on this argument-crutch recently: “Oh yeah, well if X were true, you liberals would still blame Bush.” It really is pathetic, and does nothing for your argument. You should try to find some more logical method of communicating.
Really I am a conservative? Wow thats news to me. I bet those that consider themselves conservatives would hate to know they have me in there mists.
My argument is simple, if you want to assign blame start back 100’s of years and blame everyone that built in NO’s, every President who cut a departments budget, and every person who lived there that knew the levee system was dangerous. You can blame Bush sure, but lay some everywhere else as well, or you just look like your using this tragedy as a party platform. Which is disgusting.
Bush cut the Army Corp of Engineers budget so its his fault that NO’s is in this position, so using your logic, Clinton cuts in the defense budget led to 9/11, which we all know not to be the case correct?
> [@tomndebb](#):
>
> No one was going to stop the hurricane.
>
> However, Clinton was the first president in decades to move toward placing FEMA on a professional basis. Bush replaced the Clinton FEMA director (who had experience with disaster management) with a buddy who was a good campaign organizer who suggested that his replacement be another buddy whose expertise was fundraising.
> Under this adminstration, the theory that “privatization is always best” was implemented, leading to a reduction of the FEMA disaster budget, the postponement of FEMA projects as the government went through a laborious (and not always successful) bid letting process, the dismissal of a lot of FEMA management who had hands-on experience dealing with disasters, and the abolition of the department within FEMA that Clinton had created to analyze and plan for future disasters (a department which earned high marks for having plans in place to deal with several of the hurricanes that dealt blows to the Carolinas in the late 1990s).
>
> The Bush administration also merged FEMA into Homeland Security, then canceled several projects including the rebuilding of the NO levees in order to keep the HS budget from looking too large.
>
> Would the hurricane have been as bad under Kerry? Certainly.
> Would the disaster have been as bad? Not likely.
I learned something new I didn’t know the Army Corp of Engineers was a department of FEMA. I am not debating money was cut from X to pay for X. I am arguing that for 100’s of years this was known to be a problem (NO’s) and no one was putting any serious effort into fixing it. Every President takes from something for something else, and sometimes they make the wrong choices and sometimes the right choices. But no one can blame one person for something that was known by all, and never fixed.
---
### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/127 "2005-09-02T17:54:44Z")
I just heard a replay of that actual quote of Bush’s, that no one had anticipated that the levees might breach. My God. He really said that. I mean I’ve only visited New Orleans a few times and even the bus tour guides were saying that in a major hurricane this was the big fear. Disaster planners knew that this was a big risk and scientists have been warning for years that hurricanes are, on average, going to be more intense from now on as a direct consequence of global warning.
I thought it was bad enough that his administratiion was ignoring that global warming is and will make more intense hurricanes more of the norm, and that monies were diverted from this identified risk to NO, diverted from upgrading the levees, to pay for Iraq. I hadn’t appreciated until reading posts in this thread how deep and costly the incompetence is. Thousands are needlessly dieing and many more suffering because incompetent political hacks were put in charge of FEMA and because Bush took from the Peter of New Orleans to pay for the Paul of Iraq.
Yes, now is the time to focus on saving lives. But once the rescue is done this needs thorough investigation. Blaming Bush is easy and yes his actions and inactions have caused many to die who could have otherwise been spared. But the blame process is only useful if it guides future actions. FEMA must be put squarely outside of the political process and made into a true professsional organization that is able to stratify risks and adequately prepare for them. Because we have ignored global warming we need to be ready for more hurricanes of this intensity and worse in the future.
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### Author:  [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/128 "2005-09-02T18:02:58Z")
> [@Abbie Normal](#):
>
> Bush cut the Army Corp of Engineers budget so its his fault that NO’s is in this position, so using your logic, Clinton cuts in the defense budget led to 9/11, which we all know not to be the case correct?
Which particular Clinton cuts in defense spending do you blame? Which of the Clinton _increases_ in defense spending should have prevented 9/11? Why wouldn’t you be more concerned about **intelligence** spending specifically, since that was actually relevant to the 9/11 tragedy, unless you think that a missile cruiser would have prevented it? And, as you may be aware, had you ever listened to Richard Clark, Clinton’s administration actually was aware of, and was preventing, terrorist efforts. The Bush administration shelved and tabled those efforts, and NYC paid the price.
Apart from all that, do you really have a hard time seeing the **direct** links between cutting spending on the levees, and the levees failing? Or between cutting the mitigation efforts of FEMA, and the failure of FEMA to mitigate the suffering?
> [@](#):
>
> I learned something new I didn’t know the Army Corp of Engineers was a department of FEMA.
Is it? I didn’t think it was. However, the odd thing is that Bush appears to have had it out for New Orleans by hamstringing _both_ agencies in terms of preparation.
> [@](#):
>
> Every President takes from something for something else, and sometimes they make the wrong choices and sometimes the right choices. But no one can blame one person for something that was known by all, and never fixed.
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050901/ts\_krwashbureau/\_wea\_katrina\_criticize\_exclusive](http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050901/ts_krwashbureau/_wea_katrina_criticize_exclusive)
> [@](#):
>
> In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. **It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported.**
>
> “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay,” Jefferson Parish emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the newspaper. “Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”
>
> The Army Corps’ New Orleans office, facing a $71 million cut, also eliminated funds to pay for a study on how to protect the Crescent City from a Category 5 storm, New Orleans City Business reported in June.
You can continue to pretend that Bush was equally attentive to this problem as any previous administration, but it flies in the face of reality. There always will be some slavering defenders willing to try to shift responsibility and accountability, I suppose, but it is sad when you actually encounter it.
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### Author:  [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/129 "2005-09-02T18:39:55Z")
> [@Abbie Normal](#):
>
> Bush cut the Army Corp of Engineers budget so its his fault that NO’s is in this position, so using your logic, Clinton cuts in the defense budget led to 9/11, which we all know not to be the case correct?
Its the specificity of the cuts that make the charges do damning.
Bush’s own FEMA ranked a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the top three potential disasters facing the United States. The vulnerability of the city was well-publicized and well-known.
(I’ve been reading doomsday scenarios about New Orleans for years. As soon as I saw the satellite photos of Katrina in the Gulf, my blood ran cold.)
And yet the Bush Administration submitted a budget to Congress with major cuts to the program to reinforce the levees. Congress restored some of those funds, but only to a fraction of what was needed.
You’d think that even if the Bush Administration thought that in general the Corps of Engineers Budget needed to be cut … that maybe they’d preserve the funds that would protect against ONE OF THE TOP THREE DANGERS FACING THE NATION?
If the Bush administration didn’t prepare for this, have they prepared for ANYTHING?
Imagine if major news sources had been running stories for years that terrorists planned to hijack planes and use them as bombs. Not a vague “terrorists may attack” warning, but a specific scenario. And Clinton had cut funds for screening passengers at airports. That’s the equivalent of what we’re talking about. A SPECIFIC, extremely well-publicized danger, with a SPECIFIC set of actions that could have been done to guard against it. And the Bush Administration cut the funding. Disgraceful.
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/130 "2005-09-02T18:52:22Z")
I think the basic point has been made: Shodan is attempting to shift the focus away from general responsibilities and professional preparations for major threats to specific foreknowledge of very specific events: something no one expects.
Ever since 2001, we’ve been told that Republicans were the ones to trust to prepare the nation for major disasters and national security. So much so that if you didn’t support the President, you were accused of being a barrier to dealing with terrorism and national security and so forth. This disaster has exposed just how flimsy and unprofessional and apparently, in many cases, non-existent, that preparation has been. Just from a quick scan back through newspapers and government testimony back a few years, countless examples have been found of warnings ignored, plans never funded, whistlebowers fired, and, as a constant theme, PR politics and nepotistic loyalty put over sound policy.
Shodan wants to pretend that none of that makes any difference. Sure, fire an experienced guy and put your campaign buddy in charge of FEMA, a guy who’s major interest seemed to lie more in figuring out how he could leave and get rich from private contracting in Iraq. That won’t have any effect on disaster preparedness. Sure, cut funding for the Army Corps projects to research and solve the levee problems. Fire those who complain. None of it matters. Because when one of the major disasters for whom we were supposedly preparing for strikes, it’s all just an act of God and no one is responsible or expected to know or know how to do anything.
And suddenly, the system has been caught with it’s pants down, exposed as unprepared, ill-informed, and basically even LESS together than I would have expected prior to 9/11 and all the supposed focus on major national disaster response.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/131 "2005-09-02T19:12:42Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#):
>
> There always will be some slavering defenders willing to try to shift responsibility and accountability, I suppose, but it is sad when you actually encounter it.
Leave this sort of remark outside **GD** , please.
[/Moderator Mode]
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### Author:  [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/132 "2005-09-02T19:40:29Z")
For decades, I’ve heard people complaining about the Corps of Engineers. How many of their projects are poorly designed, environmentally unsound, huge wastes of money, and political pork for influential local interests. So what’s the new orthodoxy, that the Corps of Engineers can do no wrong, and every dollar cut from their budget is an invitation to disaster?
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/133 "2005-09-02T19:53:14Z")
If they are so bad: guess what: that’s somebody’s job to fix. All in order that the things that need to get done, get done.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/134 "2005-09-02T19:54:15Z")
The Corps does a lot of different things. One can debate the merits of trying to double the length of locks on the upper Mississippi with the attendant possible effects on the ecology of that part of the river while still recognizing their capability to do good work on the levees they have actually built around existing cities. We do not need a fallacy of the excluded middle in the midst of the rest of the heat of this discussion.
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### Author:  [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/135 "2005-09-02T19:58:53Z")
> [@mks57](#):
>
> For decades, I’ve heard people complaining about the Corps of Engineers. How many of their projects are poorly designed, environmentally unsound, huge wastes of money, and political pork for influential local interests. So what’s the new orthodoxy, that the Corps of Engineers can do no wrong, and every dollar cut from their budget is an invitation to disaster?
Yes, exactly right. They are either worthy of complete elimination or are paragons of virtue and efficiency. Way to go nailing that one down.
And **tomndebb** , will do. My apologies.
---
### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/136 "2005-09-02T20:15:46Z")
Let’s ask this question, since Shodan wants us to predict stuff: what if this had been a terrorist attack (heck, perhaps one even less devastating than this event?) We were supposed to be preparing for such disasters for years now. We had gotten a wake-up call. Whole departments have been added to our government to prove that we were taking the issue seriously. Coordination was key. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what the exact disaster was.
Three years after 9/11, and there is pretty clearly no workable plan for how the nation is supposed to cope with a major disaster (of ANY sort): if there was it was tested and failed miserably. We have the heads of the relevant agencies spending more time on TV doing political spinning and praising each other than taking charge, working around the clock: exposing to the world that they don’t know facts (like what’s going on at the convention center, or that everyone feared that the levees would break) that the average CNN watchers have known for days.
We have a President who seems far more interested in getting some political photo-ops days later, smirking and joking and hugging people, than being a nerve center for coordinating the response.
And lets not be too crazy. The Democratic leaders of the state are certainly caught with their pants down as well. But this is clearly a crisis for which there is only one leader with the power and authority and responsibility to deal with what’s going on, to make sure his people are doing the things they need to do: the President. And all across the political spectrum, from conservative talk radio to NRO to the liberals (who, of course, would be piling on whether it was justified or not), are pretty consistent: this is a huge black eye for our country and its leadership.
We live in an age of constant, 24/7 meta-critique of the government and everything else. If you feel this is inappropriate to discuss now, you live in the wrong era. We discuss everything, all the time. And right now, we are discussing a collosal failure in planning and leadership.
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### Author:  [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/137 "2005-09-02T20:23:14Z")
> [@tomndebb](#):
>
> The Corps does a lot of different things. One can debate the merits of trying to double the length of locks on the upper Mississippi with the attendant possible effects on the ecology of that part of the river while still recognizing their capability to do good work on the levees they have actually built around existing cities.
That’s the problem! After every major disaster, including this one, there is no shortage of people saying that it is X’s fault for cutting the budget of the Y agency. That’s the same sort of logic that says that if you don’t support the proposed budget for your local school system, you are against education, and probably kick your dog.
---
### Author:  [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/138 "2005-09-02T20:29:30Z")
> [@mks57](#):
>
> That’s the problem! After every major disaster, including this one, there is no shortage of people saying that it is X’s fault for cutting the budget of the Y agency. That’s the same sort of logic that says that if you don’t support the proposed budget for your local school system, you are against education, and probably kick your dog.
And if you’re for it, of course, you’re all about raising taxes. We all know how well that goes over.
-Joe
---
### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/139 "2005-09-02T20:39:50Z")
> [@mks57](#):
>
> That’s the problem! After every major disaster, including this one, there is no shortage of people saying that it is X’s fault for cutting the budget of the Y agency. That’s the same sort of logic that says that if you don’t support the proposed budget for your local school system, you are against education, and probably kick your dog.
Actually, in this case, it is a matter of pointing out that the situation that actually occurred was exactly the situation described by the relevant departent as one of the three highest priority issues to be addressed _in the nation_ and the funding was cut, not just to a department, generally, but to the specific project, already under way, designed to prevent the scenario from occurring.
That is a bit different than arguing “we (generally) need funds” vs “throwing money at a(n undefined) problem.”
---
### Author:  [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-they-no-sense-of-decency-criticising-bush-for-katarina/319423/140 "2005-09-02T20:52:22Z")
> [@Apos](#):
>
> Let’s ask this question, since Shodan wants us to predict stuff: what if this had been a terrorist attack (heck, perhaps one even less devastating than this event?) We were supposed to be preparing for such disasters for years now. We had gotten a wake-up call. Whole departments have been added to our government to prove that we were taking the issue seriously. Coordination was key. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what the exact disaster was.
>
> Three years after 9/11, and there is pretty clearly no workable plan for how the nation is supposed to cope with a major disaster (of ANY sort): if there was it was tested and failed miserably. We have the heads of the relevant agencies spending more time on TV doing political spinning and praising each other than taking charge, working around the clock: exposing to the world that they don’t know facts (like what’s going on at the convention center, or that everyone feared that the levees would break) that the average CNN watchers have known for days.
> \*\*
> We have a President who seems far more interested in getting some political photo-ops days later, smirking and joking and hugging people, than being a nerve center for coordinating the response.\*\*
>
> And lets not be too crazy. The Democratic leaders of the state are certainly caught with their pants down as well. But this is clearly a crisis for which there is only one leader with the power and authority and responsibility to deal with what’s going on, to make sure his people are doing the things they need to do: the President. And all across the political spectrum, from conservative talk radio to NRO to the liberals (who, of course, would be piling on whether it was justified or not), are pretty consistent: this is a huge black eye for our country and its leadership.
>
> We live in an age of constant, 24/7 meta-critique of the government and everything else. If you feel this is inappropriate to discuss now, you live in the wrong era. We discuss everything, all the time. And right now, we are discussing a collosal failure in planning and leadership.
\*Bold added
I agree with this all except the bolded part. This was handled horribly, by all parties, and the ultimate goal better be many heads rolling. As the President is the top tier, his advisors who totally screwed the pooch on the rescue/aid work should be canned ASAP.
The President should step forward and admit this was a total clusterfuck from the get go, and create a post-Katrina panel, who will fix the problems that caused this in the first place. Without finger pointing at anyone.
Just X dollars is whats needed to help in natural disasters X workers. Get it done.
Bush was wrong, and I don’t think anyone, and I mean anyone can say different. But you cannot say that budget cuts are not a way of office. Its something they wave like a proud banner, many times rightly so. This wasn’t one of them.
According to the quote I posted originally in here, the levee’s still would of been breached the only difference would of been the water would of been able to be pumped back out quicker. So yes the tragedy could of been over quicker, but the tragedy would of still happened.
Now its time to get together so it does not happen again.
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