Written by Hunter at Daily Kos - this sums up all my anger and resentment at my government for being completely inept at handling the mass devastation in New Orleans. Bush stayed on vacation for the week's worth of warnings about Hurricane Katrina, then during the first two days of destruction, traveled west to discuss Medicare and WWII, trying to compare himself to FDR. Hats off to Hunter for putting it all into words for all of us. Read it and weep. Our country needs leadership and we have none.
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The last twelve hours of news coverage has been nearly
overwhelming. Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, others, even unapologetic
partisans like Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson -- everyone is asking
where the government is. (No, I haven't turned to Fox News. I don't
have the heart, today.) Anderson Cooper lost it
interviewing Sen. Mary Landrieu, countering her litany of thank-yous to
a series of politicians with his own encounter with rats eating a body
that had been left abandoned in the street for 48 hours. Paula Zahn boggled
at FEMA director Michael Brown's declaration that the reason about
15,000 shelter seekers at the New Orleans Convention Center have gone
without food or water since the day of the hurricane is because FEMA didn't even know the refugees were there until today.
The common televised theme is of reporters traveling to hard hit areas
in New Orleans or the smaller communities, and reporting no FEMA
presence, no National Guard presence, no food, no water, no help -- and
this is day 5. "Where is the government?" has been the predominant
theme of the day. Apologists are being met with barely concealed
disgust, in more and more quarters. Bush administration cuts to the
levee system are being widely reported. FEMA inaction is being roundly
criticized by ever-more-urgent live feeds from disheveled media figures
with stunned expressions.
The Convention Center situation appears to be horrific, with deaths of
elderly and infants due to dehydration already now occurring. It's not
clear if anything can be or is being done tonight, or how many will die
between now and the morning, or what will happen then.
The lawlessness is rampant. It's important to note, however, that the
lawlessness wasn't rampant on Monday. It wasn't rampant on Tuesday. We
heard only twinges of it on Wednesday. Today, from the sounds of the
reports, a city devoid of all hope devolved into absolute chaos.
It is nighttime again in New Orleans, and after four days of no food,
no water, no communications, no security forces, and no apparent
discernible plan that they can see, trust and hope that rescuers will
arrive seems all but gone. If the forces had arrived on Tuesday, things
would be different.
It is simply too stunning, too shocking, too soul-draining. Nobody knows where the emergency relief has been. Nobody can quite understand why the response to the catastrophe only now seems shuddering to life.
The politics are omnipresent, but present only a hollow shell behind
which a sea, an absolute frothing sea, of much worse realizations are
crowding every mind. This was a disaster the country had been preparing for. This was one of the disasters most predicted, most feared, most planned for. There was two days
of advance warning, as the massive, category 5 hurricane shifted
purposefully towards New Orleans. This was no terrorist attack -- this
time, there was warning. This time, there was knowledge.
And yet, the much-reshuffled domestic security resculpted as a result
of 9-11 simply didn't show up. It wasn't there. FEMA, which has been
hacked, shuffled, and gutted in the last few years, proved unable to
respond to a catastrophic emergency situation. The
catastrophic emergency situation, along the Gulf Coast, the one that
sounded the alarms two days before landfall, the one that triggered the
warnings of nightmare scenarios known for years in advance, and yet if
there was any advance plan at all, any knowledge at all, any fathoming
at all of how to respond in the fourty-eight hours most critical for
the survival of the victims, it didn't show up. The roads were clogged,
the islands were flooded, the levees were breached, and homeland
security wasn't there, leaving each state, each town, each police
force, each wrecked band of shell-shocked survivors to fend, and make
do, while convoys were organized and strategies prepared with seeming
obliviousness to the urgency of the numbers and clocks. There is...
almost nothing meaningful to say.
The apparent and most likely explanations for the failure, known long before the fact, are almost shattering when reread today, while the ongoing catastrophe unfolds around us.
We have witnessed two disasters this week. The first was an act of
nature. The second was not. The second disaster, still ongoing, is
unforgivable.
That's the only word that comes to mind, a word I keep repeating to
myself. These deaths, these men, these women, these infants dying now
in these hours didn't have to happen. They did not have to die waiting
for convoys to gather outside their city or for reservists to stand
alongside their shattered police forces. They did not have to wait in
darkness and fear for help to arrive, only to struggle for days without
that help ever coming.
This is not politics. This is not partisanship.
This is unforgivable.
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And they tell us we're prepared for a terrorist attack? I call bullshit. We had a week's worth of notice on this one and still can't help people who desperately need it.
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