Reply #5: Here's what I think of your blame game, $hrubbie [View All]

[GreenPartyVoter]

After Katrina: Hard questions need to be asked. But
who is to ask them?

At no time should a person who is accused of
wrongdoing investigate himself, yet this is exactly
what George W. Bush is proposing to do in light of the
terrible recovery and assistance response after
hurricane Katrina. And bipartisan efforts to
investigate are also out of order, since bipartisan
committees oversaw Homeland Security, which oversaw
the now-gutted and crippled FEMA which had been folded
into it.

Homeland Security is the first responder in national
disasters, why was it one of the last groups to show
up? The media was able to get in there, as were
celebrities, surely rescue teams could as well. And as
for shots fired, our National Guard comes under
heavier fire every day in Iraq, surely they could
manage the small amounts of gunfire from hysterical
people trying to get their attention?

Why did the president not act sooner when implored by
the Gulf State governors to send assistance both for
evacuation and rescue efforts? (The famed flooded New
Orleans school buses were useless to the mayor for
evacuation purposes without drivers and
federally-approved destinations; responsibilities that
fall squarely in FEMA’s lap.) A single phone call from
the president from the Oval Office, or Air Force One,
or the Senator’s birthday party in Arizona, or the
Naval Base Coronado after he finished strumming the
guitar he received would have sufficed. NorthCom was
in place and ready to serve, but the president did not
request their aid. He knew that a disaster of this
magnitude was possible based on the test scenario
called “Hurricane Pam”, the warnings from the
under-funded Army Corps of engineers about the levees
in New Orleans, and the alerts explaining the dire
consequences of Katrina from NOAA; he cannot claim
ignorance of the impending calamity.

Why did the president hand out positions like Head of
Homeland Security and the three top positions in FEMA
to people who had no disaster management experience
that would make them valuable in such placements? Are
former political campaign managers and horse
association attorneys who embellish their résumés the
best the President can muster for these all-important
jobs? What good are emergency officers who were so out
of touch with the situation on the ground that they
didn’t find out for DAYS that there were thousands of
people trapped at the New Orleans Convention Center?
Some “heck of a job”. Mr. Bush had nothing but high
praise for former director James Lee Witt, why didn’t
he keep the man on the job?

Why did the president stall on the acceptance of or
flat out refuse international assistance? Why was the
U.S.S. Bataan sent to the gulf only to sit there and
watch helplessly from the waters as it awaited the
call to action? FEMA and the Department of Homeland
Security appear to have been instructed to reject help
from people all over the United States. For what?
Pride? Red tape? A misunderstanding of how very bad
the situation in the gulf turned out to be?

Now the president is rumored to be thinking of passing
more tax cuts. It was bad enough to do it during a
time of war, but with the Gulf disaster stacked on top
of that there is no justification—none—for cutting
taxes at this time.

But there is every justification to demand an
independent investigation. After 9/11/2001 we were
promised that our nation would be made safer, our
emergency responses made more efficient and
streamlined. They weren’t. Someone dropped the ball
and it landed smack dab on the Gulf Coast.