NEWS: Bush Under Fire for Slow Action

FEMA is a disgrace.

They didnt know? As much airtime as those people have had?

I guess some would beleive that.

Now we know exactly how well protected we are and just how FEMA operates. I still say if those were white folks things would have been handled slightly better. Disgraceful. Well, at least now they have dropped some 600 bottles of water, nothing else. That must have caused a riot among 25,000 people!
Even the Iraqis had government food dropped off- Yea, Bush dropped the ball.

Kind of makes you wonder about the threads we have on ATS about this all powerfull FEMA ready to take over and rule the country.

Must be hell to be a president when anything and everything is blamed upon you whether you are at fault or not.




seekerof

"No one can say they didn't see it coming"
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war"

Source: All over the internet.

Like I said on the thread about looting, they knew well in advance that katrina could be bad and they should have started gearing up last week...it would have been far better wasting the money getting ready in advance and have to issue a stand down order if it didn't play out than have this situition. Bush, our most rested president, should have left Crawford last week to start planning the refief than cutting brush and bicycling and avoiding cindy sheehan as it is alot of right wing blogers are making it such a big thing that he left 2 days early....bullhooey...this time thousands of our own people are dying because lack of planning and misguided budget cuts and no amount of spin can change that.

dgtempe, where you been?
Katrina Victims: More Human Sacrifice for Iraq War

U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war"

Nothing more than an anti-Bush slant.
Read the above again: see the key words making it a anti-Bush, anti-war slant.
Be assured, that the government is not the only forces that move, shape, and use propaganda techniques.
Blame can be traced back as far as the Carter administration.
But of course, as par, blame rests on the shoulders of the administration that such a castastrophe occurs on. Typical.





seekerof

[edit on 2-9-2005 by Seekerof]

Blaming Bush for the hurricane is of course, completely unfair...

However, it is HIS administration that IS to blame for slow and inadequete response....

We are now a few days out from the initial disaster, there should be NO reason we don't have THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of troops there by now to keep order, distribute supplies, etc. The response so far is absolutely inexcusable....especially considering New Orleans' strategic value to the US. We're talking about one city single-handedly being responsible for a 30 cent per gallon gas hike overnight. This is more than a matter of even humanitarian disaster relief, it's a matter of national security, and it's high time this administration started treating it as such.

Instead, we have this idiot on tv, smiling his goofy ass monkey grin, while he says the aid is coming.... IT SHOULD ALREADY BE THERE!!! I don't care if one is a Democrat, Republican, or frickin' Commie, the response is inexcusable....simple as that. You can chat all you want about Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., or even Clinton having a hand in it, such as building the levees to only withstand Cat 3, but in the end, the real test is "how was the response handled"? And right now, this administration is sorely at an "F"

Seekerof, I really don't any of us logical thinking people who have witnessed the events of the past 6 days are blaming President Bush for the Hurricane.

WE'RE PISSED OFF AT HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, HIM BEING THE LEADER OF IT, HANDLED THIS CATASPROPHE IN THE DAYS PRECEDING AND DAYS FOLLOWING KATRINA'S LANDFALL!!!!!!!!!

and I'm not screaming at you seek, I'm just screaming because I don't know how to else deal with this situation right now. I want to help, but I've done everything that I the average person can do. I expected more from my country. I'm sad, mad and very dissappointed.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Blaming Bush for the hurricane is of course, completely unfair..

Yes. . . is very unfair a natural disaster is not body's fault, no god, jesus, politicians.

However, it is HIS administration that IS to blame for slow and inadequate response....

Yes, yes, yes, we have plenty of agencies that "ARE" receiving funds yearly to be able to handle disaster, but they have been highly inadequate in the south right now.

My concern is that if we are not ready to handle natural disaster that means we are not ready to handle another terrorist attack either.

A nation like ours the citizens expect the government to take care of things and to provide what the citizens need immediately, that is why funds are allocated to certain disaster in our soil.

No been prepared is not excuses.





[edit on 2-9-2005 by marg6043]

President Bush made a promising start by returning to Washington and declaring that in Hurricane Katrina, "we are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history".

But even then some of his supporters, like columnist Peggy Noonan, were concerned that the federal government was a bit slow off the mark. She wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "More was needed in terms of sending a US military presence into New Orleans."

She asked about Mr Bush: "Does he understand that what has happened in our Gulf is as important as what is happening in the other Gulf?"

Mr Bush has since called the hurricane "a temporary disruption".

That was an off-the-cuff remark which his speechwriters, always so careful to try to reach for a phrase which meets the needs of the moment, must have groaned at.

news.bbc.co.uk...

A Temporary disruption?? did Mr Bush even see what happened? how clueless can a president be about his own state??

People I speak to in the U.K can't believe how a country like America is acting so poorley in this crisis. FEMA should get its @ss kicked after this is all cleared up too. Govenment and FEMA should all be held before a public board and questions and answers should be taken, televised, LIVE.

Americans deserve the right to speak face to face with the people who have acting so amazingly slow this week.

If this is how your govenment is going to act when the big s**t happen good luck to you all!

[edit on 2-9-2005 by 7th_Chakra]

The best assumption one can make from afar is that those people who ARE there are doing as much as they can given the circumstances - They should not have fingers pointed at them - They're doing a remarkable job saving people under these circumstances which they too must live in...

But I'm in general agreement here that with Bush jerking off in the background and a complete absence of more troops, combined with the anguish of this poor mayor who must watch as his people raid the city and die, the response time is simply too slow for words...

And meanwhile there are people out there like my father, who seem to think that this is being handled as best it can and there's no need to make a fuss over the blame-game at a time like this...

Under different situations I could perhaps find the time to agree with his sentiments, but the fact of the matter is, that while we idly sit around listening to tragedy after tragedy unfold we are only naturally inclined to question why this is even happening....

There's no doubt that the responce to this tragedy has been slow and mismanaged, heck FEMA doesn't even seem to know what's going on. But I think the roving bands of gun-toting idiots are having an effect on the speed at which things are happening as well. There's a lot of relief/transportation in standby mode thanks these people taking a shot at anything in "their" town.

I work w/ a guy who has a close family friend that lives in NO. This man got stuck on his roof like a lot of others. He was able to get to a boat, and get around 200 people off theirs roofs and onto dry land. And guess what, he was being shot at every once in a while the whole time he was helping. That just proves to me that some of the people still there want to be there. They want as much time as possible to loot and pillage. I say leave those people there. Let them die in a toxic swamp surrounded by their "spoils". But for the love of God, let the people who want out be taken out.

They need to shift priorities and give up on controlling the bad element, and get the victims out of there. Don't let the people who want out die because they think it's more important to stop the looters. Rescues teams should have armed escorts w/ the ok to shoot anyone who tries to interfer w/ rescue operations. Ignore the looting unless it interfers w/ saving lives.


[edit on 9/2/2005 by yadboy]

I agree bush has been to slow in his response, but remember these people were told to evacuate and many did not.

How many of those that didnt COULDNT?

Some of them probalby could, but overall New Orleans is a very poor city. Many don't own cars, or cars that run.

Where they supposed to walk a couple hundred miles in two days?

Any city hit with a evacuation a few days ahead of time will have thousands upon thousands that just can't get out. Many probably want to but cant.

Now as for the members on here and others that choose to ride it out. I just cant feel sorry for them. They choose their fate.

The fact is scholars, journalists, elected officials, the military, etc...all KNEW almost exactly what would happen, right down to the numbers of the people who would stay and the strength of a storm it would take to knock out the levees...

And we sat back and let it happen...

No...better yet...we went to war, cut funds....and then sat back and let it happen...

People who live in a friggin city can't be blamed b/c it's a place that provides jobs and shelters, no matter how precarious the elements may be...

We all live in cities that could crumble at any moment under some horrible natural disaster....

And we're all seeing exactly the kind of attention WE would be getting - black/white, rich/poor, old/young...

It’s time for change…and I think we finally have enough people's attention, under the most unfortunate of circumstances, to stand up and demand that change...

There may be civil unrest in New Orleans, but I think there's going to be other forms of unrest sweeping this nation - People fed up with the BS....

And as much as I dread those days to come, I can't wait for the changes, which I may never see in my lifetime....

[edit on 9/2/2005 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

Does any one have a link to Nagin's CNN interview? I'd love to see it

With regards to the Federal Government's handling of this disaster, there can be no excuse. We've all seen how the American military can move across the globe with pin point precision and take over and lock down an entire country of 20 million people but they cant seem to mount a rescue operation for 25,000? In their own country?!

What I've seen and read of Bush's behaviour during this crisis would put Putin to shame and smacks of the French Royalty during the French Revolution. "Temporary disruption" Mr.Bush? Are you going to tell the good people of New Orleans to "Eat cake" next? Disgraceful.

[edit on 2/9/05 by subz]

I think all of you remember the time during the attacks of 9/11. What did he (Bush) do? Sitting in a classroom reading a book. Didn't he learned from this fault? Eat more vitamin.

Originally posted by dgtempe
"No one can say they didn't see it coming"
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war"

Source: All over the internet.

I'd be interested in your source for these statements. Look into it a bit further. Look under Army Corp of Engineers and Peace Dividend. Then look at the date.

This is superbly ironic:

President George Bush has condemned the initial response to Hurricane Katrina as "not acceptable", before arriving in Alabama to visit the stricken area.

And I am pretty sure that the phrase "not acceptable" is a bit of an understatement.

Its all very well if he thinks the effort is "not acceptable", then why is he not doing more to push it along? For a guy that could destroy the world with one push of a button, he seems to be finding it very difficult to save one, very important I might add, city.

BBC Source

Originally posted by Rikimaru
I agree bush has been to slow in his response, but remember these people were told to evacuate and many did not.

And maybe they didnt own a car, had no money for a bus, no money for a hotel, bla bla bla bla bla....
Give me a break, please