I'm baaaaack! The political landscape is heating up like a cast iron pan sitting in the focus of a parabolic mirror in Death Valley at high noon in August. The Mandelbrot Rorschach that is our government is happily tearing out its own liver over the hurricane Katrina response. The mayor of New Orleans makes barely intelligible accusations and profanity laden laments to Louisiana governor Blanco, yet when it was suggested before the storm hit that he use the city's school buses to evacuate people he refused, saying that 'they' should send a fleet of Greyhound buses, and when 'they' didn't it was too late since the school buses were underwater.
Governor Blanco raises a fist at the federal government, saying if they had strengthened the levees in past years, as was requested by the Army Corps of Engineers this never would have happened. The feds riposte by saying that billions were given to Louisiana, but the bills were so full of pork that very little of the money actually made it to where it was supposed to go, and after living in LA for three years, and seeing the levels of corruption there, I don't doubt it.
But wait! Breaking news, folks. FEMA chief Michael Brown has been fired!! He has borne the brunt of the criticism since the hurricane, and it doesn't seem unjustified. Reporters were on the scene within hours of the devastation, but he says he couldn't get his people in for days. Then there was the interview with Ted Koppel where he was asked why people at the New Orleans Convention Center had yet to receive any assistance, and he was completely unaware that anyone was there. Koppel lost his cool for a moment asking Brown if he had any televisions or radios at FEMA, since the situation at the convention center was well publicized.
Even Colin Powell, who has frustratingly refused to criticize the administration he so obviously disagreed with, has said that the response to the crisis was substandard.
So here's my opinion, and the one thing folks seem to be ignoring. Reporters were able to get to the heart of the stricken areas immediately. It was plain that people were dying, and that rapid, urgent action was needed. I keep hearing that the response was appropriate given the scope of the tragedy...and it is now. But for nearly 4 days nothing happened, and too many people died. The preparations for, and response to this storm that, despite W's protestations to the contrary, was a surprise to no one were totally inadequate. And in this situation inadequacy = death. When 7 astronauts died because of bureaucracy people clamored for heads to roll, well possibly thousands of civilians have died needlessly, and there had damn well be not only reckoning and recompense, but measures must be put in place to ensure that such a thing never happens in this country again. FEMA has, over the last few years, become a punchline rather than a godsend, and this tragedy points that out in full, bloody detail. It's a real shame that Trent Lott lost a house in the hurricane, and I'm sure that W was sincere when he sympathized with his colleague on national television, which is what really scares me. All this talk about making America safer for Americans has just been covered with 20 feet of stinking, sewage-riddled, oil-coated, corpse-filled water, and when it finally recedes there had better be real action taken, rather than the perpetual buck passing and spin doctoring that has been the hallmark of the Bush administration.
In my humble opinion, of course.
Marius
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