Obligatory Political Outrage
Keith Olbermann and his team put together a scathing video timeline of what was happening with Katrina, and what the Feds were doing about it. Watch it.
Nancy Pelosi describes a meeting with Clueless George.
A short list of FEMA's recent inexplicable (and malevolent) actions.
Project Censored's list of the Ten Most Censored News Stories of 2004 is out.
Finally, The Daily Show on the administration's damage control, and where it's focused. (See if you can spot the Rodents of Unusual Size!)
4 Comments:
Many of the "turned away" stories are turning out to be "go here where the need is greater instead" stories or not actually the feds doing the turning away. Not that local authorities keeping out the Red Cross because it might make people enter the city isn't outrageous. It just seems to me that the balance of the attacks is focusing too heavily, if not entirely, on the federal level. The local boys screwed the pooch big time here and if that's not acknowledged there may be nothing learned from their, IMO criminal, mistakes.
Here's an interesting article, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09military.html?ei=5090&en=aa642b8c89c27c01&ex=1283918400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1126238795-dGCl9WlaN8lbkCHBy9hw2w&pagewanted=print
Part of me says Bush should have said, "Fuck the political fallout." But if he had, I'm not certain the situation wouldn't be worse than it already is.
Scott, I'll agree with you that mistakes were made at the local and state levels just as they were at the federal level. But the negligence is at the federal level. The locals didn't have the option to be negligent. When Brown and Chertoff are saying they can't act until after the fact, that they can't rush in and that sort of thing, that's disingenuous. Post-Homeland Security the buck stops at the federal level, which is where the worst mistakes were made. The argument presented in that article is a smokescreen; it was all on the Feds anyway, whether they "seized control" or not. They just refused to accept the responsibility.
http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html
--Begin quote--
Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders."
-- End quote --
The National Guard is currently under the command of the governor because she hasn't yielded authority to the feds. This combined with the Gretna police force preventing people from leaving N.O. is at least as big a fuck up if not more than anything happening on the federal level.
Add to that the existence of an evacuation plan that the mayor didn't know about or chose not to follow before the storm hit and you have some pretty huge mistakes. Negligence even.
Sure the buck stops with the feds, but that doesn't absolve the local authorities of their duties or responsibilities. I'm not saying the feds are blameless let's just not ignore the local bastards.
I agree that the Gretna police fucked up royally. The entire force should be fired, and whoever was giving the orders should be prosecuted.
And in the run-up to the storm more could have been done at every level to prepare for what everyone knew was coming someday. The "get out if you can" plan that the mayor put forward was ridiculous.
However, based on what the Feds have done so far, I don't blame the governor for not turning over control. They couldn't designate the right counties as disaster areas. They couldn't arrange for aid until after the fact. They couldn't get to the people who needed help; hell, they claimed to not even know where they were, even though the press was there. At this point, I wouldn't trust the Feds to coordinate the evacuation of a skating rink. No question that everyone needs to be working together better, but when there's an obvious weak link that makes it difficult. The trust component just isn't there.
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