What's this spam about? The thread is called "Legit complaints against Bush", not "Legit complaints against Katrina". If you have complaints about Bush's response - post them here. If you believe Bush did everything right, what the heck, post it here too, make a fool of yourself once again.
September 3, 2005 United States of Shame By MAUREEN DOWD Stuff happens. And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens. America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America. W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer. Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal. Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses. Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs. Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports. Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl. In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq. Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island. Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared. Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center. Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode. When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals. When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed. Who are we if we can't take care of our own?
You are welcome to the club who knew Bush was anything but a "compassionate conservative" from the start. No hard feelings that you were duped and were on the wrong side of what will be known as the history of Bush supporters who finally saw the light, it happens to the best of us some times... As you slowly come out of the right wing Matrix and go back and look at what Bush has said and done, everything will make a lot more sense. Follow the money, follow the money....
Editorials, Including Those at Conservative Papers, Rip Bush's Hurricane Response By E&P Staff Published: September 02, 2005 12:30 PM ET NEW YORK Editorials from around the country on Friday -- including at the Bush-friendly Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times -- have, by and large, offered harsh criticism of the official and military response to the disaster in the Gulf Coast. Here's a sampling. Dallas Morning News As a federal official in a neatly pressed suit talked to reporters in Washington about "little bumps along the road" in emergency efforts, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent SOS. The situation near the convention center was chaotic; not enough buses were available to evacuate thousands of survivors, and the streets were littered with the dead. Moments later, President Bush took center stage and talked at length about the intricacies of energy policy and plans to keep prices stable. Meanwhile, doctors at hospitals called the Associated Press asking to get their urgent message out: We need to be evacuated, we're taking sniper fire, and nobody is in charge. Who is in charge? Losing New Orleans to a natural disaster is one thing, but losing her to hopeless gunmen and a shameful lack of response is unfathomable. How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can't stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans? President Bush, please see what's happening. The American people want to believe the government is doing everything it can do -- not to rebuild or to stabilize gas prices -- just to restore the most basic order. So far, they are hearing about Herculean efforts, but they aren't seeing them. *** The Washington Times Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed. We expected to see, many hours ago, the president we saw standing atop the ruin of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action. We're pleased he finally caught a ride home from his vacation, but he risks losing the one trait his critics have never dented: His ability to lead, and be seen leading. He returns to the scene of the horror today, and that's all to the good. His presence will rally broken spirits. But he must crack heads, if bureaucratic heads need cracking, to get the food, water and medicine to the people crying for help in New Orleans and on the Mississippi coast. The list of things he has promised is a good list, but there is no time to dally, whether by land, sea or air. We should have delivered them yesterday. Americans are dying. *** Philadelphia Inquirer (and other Knight Ridder papers) "I hope people don't point -- play politics during this period." That was President Bush's response yesterday to criticism of the U.S. government's inexplicably inadequate relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina. Sorry, Mr. President, legitimate questions are being asked about the lack of rescue personnel, equipment, food, supplies, transportation, you name it, four days after the storm. It's not "playing politics" to ask why. It's not "playing politics" to ask questions about what Americans watched in horror on TV yesterday: elderly people literally dying on the street outside the New Orleans convention center because they were sick and no one came to their aid. The rest of America can't fathom why a country with our resources can't be at least as effective in this emergency as it was when past disasters struck Third World nations. Someone needs to explain why well-known emergency aid lessons aren't being applied here. This hurricane is no one's fault; the devastation would be hard to handle no matter who was in charge. But human deeds can mitigate a disaster, or make it worse. For example: Did federal priorities in an era of huge tax cuts shortchange New Orleans' storm protection and leave it more vulnerable? This flooding is no surprise to experts. They've been warning for more than 20 years that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain from emptying into the under-sea-level city would likely break under the strain of a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4. So the Crescent City sits under water, much of its population in a state of desperate, dangerous transience, not knowing when they will return home. They're the lucky ones, though. Worse off are those left among the dying in a dying town. The questions aren't about politics. They are about justice. *** Minneapolis Star Tribune But whatever the final toll, the wrenching misery and trauma confronting the people of New Orleans is much greater than it should be -- as it is, in fact, for tens of thousands of people along the strip of Mississippi that was most brutally assaulted by the storm. The immediate goal must be to ease that suffering. The second goal must be to understand how we came to this sorry situation. How do you justify cutting $250 million in scheduled spending for crucial pump and levee work in the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), authorized by Congress in 1995? How do you explain the almost total lack of coordination among federal, state and local officials both in Louisiana and Mississippi? No one appeared in charge. *** Des Moines Register The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was the first practical test of the new homeland-security arrangements and the second test of President Bush in the face of a national crisis. The performance of both has been less than stellar so far. Katrina was a disaster that came with at least two days of warning, and it has been more than four days since the storm struck. Yet on Thursday, refugees still huddled unrescued in the unspeakable misery of the New Orleans Superdome. Patients in hospitals without power and water clung to life in third-world conditions. Untold tragedies lie yet to be discovered in the rural lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
August 30, 2005 President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/480/capm10208301856 In this image provided by ABC News, President Bush holds up a guitar presented to him by Country singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/482/capm10308301923
I assume you don't type 100% accurately at all times, either, but I don't know you. Thanks for calling me a genius (which I have never claimed to be). By doing so, it is revealed that you are most definitely not one. Have a nice weekend.
This bickering is pretty lame ass. Most of you must not have anything better to do than point their finger and blame someone for what has happened. GWB is the first president in the last century to have to gone through this scale of disaster, so I'm not about to point my finger at him or anyone else. Learn from the mistakes of this effort and hopefully changes will be implemented for future catastrophes. xbrxx
It's an outrage that Bush didn't consult with the UN prior to sending in troops. This unilateral relief effort has obviously brought the world together against America. As for Katrina, who has suspiciously disappeared without a trace, does anyone here doubt that she has been illegally imprisoned at Guantanamo? You just know she is being forced to pose for CIA torture masters on her hands and knees, wearing only a dog leash, and forced to have sex with Andrew (who disappeared last year, also under mysterious circumstances)! I think I speak for all progressives in demanding that they RELEASE KATRINA NOW!!! Furthermore, the fascist government's assault on the brave members of the People's Front for the Liberation of Plasma TVs and Assorted Non-Survival Merchandise is absolutely horrific! Rise up now against the Bush-Israel Junta occupying military forces and do not cease until free products are made available to all the good "refugees" (yet another regressive term that I hate!).