Watching all this as a UK subscriber, I am shocked at the complete incompetance of the US authorities.....if I were American I would be calling for the Govt' to resign after this. I travel to the States twice a year minimum and love the country and it's people and can't believe this is happening live on TV for 5 days with almost no coordinated action from the richest, best equipped and one of the largest military forces in the world. How on earth is it not possible to have got large numbers of troops and medical staff in there on the first day and bottled water, tented shelter, basic food etc etc......24 hr bus shuttles in/out of the city...food/water/medical staff arrive, people leave....not rocket science is it? How many Chinnook and other helicopters do you have over there?...why is there not a 10 min constant shuttle all day long bringing in water/key aid workers and removing the sick/injured? This is more reminiscent of Soviet Russia when despite having huge forces there was usually a paralysis when decisive action and a coordinated response was required and is truly a low point in US history.
Many good points. America is a multicultural mess where no one can agree on anything. We are held together by glue. We are like the Soviet Union in more than most think or know. The Soviet Union was based on Scientific Materialism. It was the biggest Human/economic experiment in the history of the world. America in the last 60 years has put in place some of the largest social experiments in the History of the World. The Soviet Union had people desperate to believe it was all rosy until it came down around them overnight. America was never designed to accommodate a large centralized Govt. They were apparently geared up to bring stuff in. When they started shooting at relief workers---alot of them refused to put their lives in danger. Furthermore, New Orleans is run by a bunch of fools. They cannot plan their way out of paper bag. There is alot of blame to go around. Alot of helpless people who depend on the Govt day and day out to meet every need---they live from check to check (many on public assistance). There are people down there that stayed and planned accordingly. Anyone that depends on the US Govt. is putting their lives in danger. Oh and in several areas of New Orleans the police just walked off the job and left. Many of the most caotic areas have no police there at all. It should be interesting to see where they all went.
The problem, in four simple letters: F E M A The Federal Emergency Management Agency is a complete, total and utter disaster and should be completely dismantled and rebuilt or replaced. FEMA is not Bush's fault. It has been an incompetent agency for a long time. I have friends who work in the emergency response business and who have worked alongside FEMA. ClusterFck describes this agency well. But like all government agencies, it grows and mutates and takes on a cancerous life of its own, quite apart from its designated mission. It becomes a place where worthless bureaucrats can hold comfy sinecures. And, no matter how imcompetent, you can't fire them nowadays! I hope Bush finds a way to gut this worthless agency and start over. m
September 2, 2005 A Can't-Do Government By PAUL KRUGMAN Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening. So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability. First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all. There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response. Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!" Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago. Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain." In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending. Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals. Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared." I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor. At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice. Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk. So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.
Very sad indeed and, as you say, it is the poorest 20% or so who suffer the most. The response to Sept 11th seemed to be very efficient and well coordinated but then one tends to forget that most people there had the wherewithall to help themselves and for the most part had their possesions and homes intact. I hope things improve soon for the poor souls in NO and the Gulf Coast and hopefully this will be the low point and lessons will be learnt.
Do you really think that if this had happened in an area of mostly white affluent republicans that we would have seen the same type of delays in getting help to them?
well no this is an embarrassment. Well lets go back to my original statement that I thought looters should be shot. Now you are finally getting the reports that I was getting. Finally you are getting the reports of gangs of armed men raping, killing, and stealing everything in site. Of these men trying to shoot down helicopters. And might i say zzzzz you better get better intelligence and news because we were hereing about this since wednesday. Not on this scale but the pieaces were coming together. Now these thugs are trying to shoot at medical helicopters and blow up hospitals. These are organize gangs, thats why I advocated a shoot to kill. You need better news resources Zzzzz/
They have a tough job, but like Homeland Security, they seem to find the most inefficient, painful way to do things.
Its completely bushes fault. What was the whole point of the costly reorganization into homeland security. What was the point of it, so that during disasters we could respond quickly and efficiently. Can you imagine what could happen if a terriost had a nuclear attack, or widespread attack on the US. Katrina was the first post 911 test. Bush failed miserably. After 100's of billions of dollars and they cant handle one city like new orleans. What if this was LA or chicago.
I know you think they should be shot, but shooting unarmed people is wrong in my opinion. Now, these so called gangs brandishing weapons, they are not really looters....they are criminals, and law enforcement has procedures in place to deal with them. I am not justifying any criminal behavior of those who are looting non essential items in order to live, but shooting to kill someone who is stealing food to survive is not right IMO.