derno you seem like a rather angry person. Read my post. I said I AGREE there is plenty of blame to go around. It seems though, thanks to the media, the blame should be pointed at 1 or 2 people. I think this is wrong.
If you want to hold Bush and Brownie solely responsible then I would have to say its only because of your political views or hatred of Bush. The feds were not and should not be the first responding agency. There has to be some accountability from the local and state agencies. Only until that happens can they identify ALL of the problems and work towards fixing them so that they hopefully won’t happen again.
I have said repeatedly that the fault appears to lie with all 3 levels of government. I just don’t understand why the federal government is opposed to a bi-partisan, independent investigation…did you miss that part of my post? If the media is mis-assigning blame, then why not set the record straight? It is easy to criticize Bush, especially given that his approval rating had been in decline in the prior months. If this criticism is unfair, then why is he blocking a fair, unbiased investigation?
With regards to your independent investigation comments, the like does not exist in Washington, D.C. Just look at the 9/11 commission which INCLUDED officials who erected the barrier of communication between intelligence agencies with no legal precedent. If were a republican I would block as well, just to save time and money on a public masturbation session.
On the Blame Game. I have been involved in disaster recovery (albeit not this scale) in several floods and tornadoes. Oddly enough the local sheriff was out rounding up people with cargo vans to help get the poor or elderly to the elementary school where school buses would carry them to a safe shelter.
In NewOrleans disaster plan it states that the city would use the public transit buses to evacuate the poor and elderly. Didn’t happen. If you alter your logistics that significantly, then you must prepare for the consequences. Perhaps by sequestering provisions from private enterprise using the remainder of the local police force? If there was enough of the local police force around to enforce order within the “safe zone”.
I would never want to have the federal gov’t to be more aggressive than they have been in past or present. Imagine if they had chosen a closer staging area and all of their gear was destroyed by Katrina. We’d be in a real pickle then.
If you would like a good example of division of tactical and strategic response take a look at the Marine Corps vs the Army. The Marines are first responders, designed to get in quick take a hell of a beating in the process and prep the area for the big green machine. The same for local vs federal
Quan2m,
Good point about the independent commission. You are right that it is difficult to find a truly independent commission - see my comment about Ken Starr above. However, there is so much of the “blame game” (anyone else starting to hate that phrase?), that it is difficult to determine where blame should be assigned, so that we could learn from the mistakes and not repeat them. I know that FEMA’s 2001 report listed a hurricane hitting NO as the #3 most likely disaster to occur in the US. FEMA also ran a simulation called Hurricane Pam about a year prior to Katrina, and it forecast dire results in the case of a hurricane. Shouldn’t the government have been a little more prepared, at all levels? Would the Feds seem more credible if Bush had not stated that no one could have predicted that the levees would be breeched, despite the countless examples, including federal scenarios, foreshadowing exactly what happened during Katrina? And why did a senior Whtie house offical lie to the Wash post and Newsweek regarding the timeframe for when the governor declared a state of emergency, leading both publications to publish retractions?
I have no disaster experience, other than working in an emergency room, and I would not qualify myself to determine who failed in each aspect of the Hurricane response. I would have more faith in FEMA had the administration not stocked it with inexperienced political cronies. Bill Clinton appointed James Lee Witt as FEMA director, and he garnered bi-partisan praise as an experienced disaster expert (I believe both Bushes have praised him in the past). GWB turned FEMA over to Joe Allbaugh, who referred to it as “an oversized entitlement program”. The oddly recurring theme for the administration appointees is that they often are opposed to the agency of their appointment (see Bolton to the UN, Eugene Scalia as head of labor, etc.). Allbaugh then bequeathed the job to his college buddy Brownie, who I actually felt badly for, until I saw him on CNN, displaying remarkable arrogance, to the point that the republican senators berated him during Tuesday’s hearing. Brownie does not appear to have any experience in the disaster field, and it is unclear why he thinks that he did a “darn good job”. And I would like to know why he was removed, if he was a competent, effective director - Bush makes a point of not bending to public pressure, right?
I know that some of the local buses were used, although many were not. Governor Blanco said that she told Brownie that she needed at least 700 buses, and that he told her not to use the school buses, that he was sending a fleet of federal buses. She says that the feds only provided 100 of the buses requested…I have no idea if any of this is true, or if she is also just shifting blame. Even accepting your military analogy, with the supposition that the first two days were mostly a local affair, shouldn’t the feds have acted much more effectively during days 3-6?
Quan2m, thanks for the informed opinions. I’ll be out of town for 5 days, but hopefully there will be some good responses for me to read next week.