They were, for those things under state and local control. Bush was held responsible for the parts of the screw-up that were under federal control.
Personally I lay the majority of the blame for NO on the local government. It’s not one of the major gripes I have against Bush et al. Iraq and the massive amount of spending, the out of control growth of the government…stuff like THAT I lay squarely at Bush’s furry feet.
-XT
Well, I can’t dig up a cite right now, but I’m pretty sure that’s why former Governor Blanco didn’t even bother to run for reelection, ensuring that Bobby Jindal would win.
Also, the Governor during Katrina was unpopular enough that she didn’t stand for re-election, so she was certainly held accountable by her constituents.
People here may complain more about the federal level, but then most of us neither vote nor pay taxes in Louisiana.
And the majority are of the Democrat persuasion, just like the Governor of La and mayor or N.O., right? 
Key-word being “might”.
Yes, but that’s really not the sort of thing you want to be uncertain about. The proper response to hearing that the system protecting an area containing well over a million people may fail under the winds and rains from an enormous storm is “Well then, do whatever you have to do to make sure those people are okay.” Or something along those lines.
you are way off on this. FEMA was exactly where it was suppose to be prior to the hurricane hitting land. There were multiple INLAND ** sites set up to receive evacuees. The Mayor, the Governor and local response groups were ** personally warned by the Director of the National Hurricane Center (Max Mayfield) to evacuate. He went to the extraordinary effort to call fire and police agencies himself. The Mayor did not issue the warning he himself created after participating in the Hurricane Pam exercise. The announcement that never aired specifically said that it was the responsibility of everyone to evacuate themselves. If they didn’t have transportation then it was up to them to find someone with transportation. That was the announcement that was supposed to go out. His actual announcement was a half mumbled directive to leave the city and anybody who did not could go to the Superdome. So instead of issuing the correct evacuation announcement he invited everybody to a tailgate party only he forgot to bring food or water.
It was well known that the levies could not withstand a level 4 and 5 hurricane and would probably not hold up to a level 3. New Orleans is situated in an area where the major highways are vulnerable to hurricane damage. There are only 3 major roads leading out of the city. If the city isn’t directly flooded by storm surge then the inland rainfall ends up filling Lake Pontchartrain until it back surges into the canals (none of which had flood gates).
By not evacuating the city Mayor Nagin created a situation where supplies had to be redirected BACK to a disaster area. This was compounded by the inevitable rioting which was made worse because the Governor delayed a request (by 2 days) for the National Guard even though she was told point blank that she was the only person who could issue that request.
Bottom line, Mayor Nagin deliberately ignored his own directives and in doing so he created a situation that diverted much needed rescue equipment away from the areas that were directly hit by the hurricane. Instead of evacuating the city he created a situation where the supplies had to be redirected at great expense.
The reason this was significant is that he claimed that no one ever told him N.O. was at risk. If you remember he was clueless about the storm until his aids put together a DVD to show him.
BTW, it’s not like people in Louisiana don’t know about hurricanes. All evacuation routes are well marked. During hurricane season, when I lived there, the grocery bags all had hurricane tracking charts. No one is saying that Bush is solely responsible, but Katrina was not exactly a moment of glory, for him or his horsey appointee.
You can’t answer this question without discussing Iraq. It has drained precious resources from everything else, especially the real war on terror, not to mention the loss of lives and the tarnished view of the U.S., worldwide.
Bush starved regulatory agencies and slashed Federal spending in every social program, ignoring the needs of most Americans. He abused presidential power to advance an ideology that lines the coffers of his corporate friends at the expense of the American people. Bush has managed to amass a national debt that will be a ball and chain for future generations. He doesn’t care. He is incompetent. This incompetence damaged the U.S.'s reputation around the world and, most significantly, with her allies.
The fact that Nagin was also incompetent does not mitigate the fact that Bush had stuffed FEMA with political hacks. At the time of Katrina five of the eight top managers at FEMA had no previous experience responding to disasters. Link.
This story details some of the internal documents that describe the incompetence at the agency. Link. While this story and this story document some of the massive incompetence after the disaster that has lead to waste and fraud.
In general, the Bush administration has rewarded political reliability and adherence to ideological orthodoxy over competence to a shocking degree. Scientists at Nasa had to take direction on climate change from a college dropout and the CPA of Iraq was riddled with political hacks with little to no experience, including a 24 year old with no financial experience who was tasked with managing Iraq’s stock exchange.
Yeah, discussing his failures “apart from Iraq” really is tough.
Bush cites No Child Left Behind as one of his few accomplishments, but I think that we can at best call its results “mixed”. NCLB has turned elementary schools into test preparation factories, with no time for arts, sciences or field trips.
His predeliction for “signing statements” is one of the most frightening aspects of his administration, one that I hope his successor immediately repudiates. We face a grim future indeed if he’s established a precedent that future presidents get to pick & choose what parts of legislation they like and what they plan to ignore.
I understand he can pretty consistently take on a pretzel, two falls out of three…
I take it you agree Bush failed and you just don’t want him getting lonely?
Evacuating the city?! You can’t seriously believe that was ever a realistic option, not if they had six months to plan and prepare for that alone.
Are you trying to say that there is no evacuation plan for major cities…especially a major city like NO that was KNOWN to be in danger of just such an event happening??? Or that it would take 6 months(!!) to evacuate a city?? Seriously?
If this is the case and they had no plan to evacuate that would take less than 6 months (or even 1 months) then all I can say is…the people got what they deserved by electing these clowns in the first place.
I suppose we could broaden that to encompass us all in light of the threads subject…
-XT
No, I’m skeptical it would be at all possible to evacuate a major modern city in a day, if you had six months to prepare for that day and conditions were fine and fair.
If it’s not possible then there are going to be a lot of dead people at some point…and a lot more dead people in NO the next time a major hurricane has the city in it’s sights.
-XT