Exactly! At the end of the Gulf War, we put in the UNSCOM WMD inspection team from 1991 - 1998. They were given a hard time by the Iraqi's, but they went everywhere they needed to go. They declared they had found and destroyed 96% of the WMD that documentation indicated Iraq had prior to the gulf war. The remaining 4%, in their opinion, was lost or improperly accounted for. (It's interesting that the Kaye and Dulfor US WMD search teams did find a few WMD after the current war, but they were from the 4% that the UNSCOM team did NOT find after the Gulf War.) In the fall of 2002, Saddam accepted Hans Blix and another UN WMD inspection team, who found NOTHING. Now if Colin Powell could show those photos of chemical weapons facilities and chem weapon disposal sites, we could have told Blix where to go and he would have found them. But HE FOUND NOTHING! The world was effective in certifying that Saddam had no WMD from 91-98 with weapons inspectors in Iraq, we put them back in during the fall of 2002, and we could have put them back in and left them in any time we wanted to. We would not have lost 3,100 dead, 26,000 wounded, half of whom cannot return to combat status because their wounds are so severe, and we would not have to be spending a billion dollars a week over there. There were other options to deal with Saddam, and Bush chose the most expensive in dollars and US lives. This was a huge mistake by the Bush administration.
What a novel concept. Like that's never happened before. FEMA was grossly unprepared for a disaster like Katrina, but the majority of the fault lies with Edith for playing political gamesmanship in the critical 1st hours. Bush wanted to federalize the Guard from the start and Blanco would have none of it. Also, Bush was not responsible for getting the people out before the storm hit. That was a local matter. Still, no one foresaw the late movement of Katrina and the destruction of internal levees that caused all of the misery. It's all hindsight IMO and the real tragedy will be if nobody learned it's lessons.
Lessons were obviously learned. We put in defective pumps. :dis: Like SF says, Bush probably isn't the first president guilty of appointing unqualified people into positions of varying importance, but he may be worse about it than most. It sure seems more prevalent. Still doesn't make it right or him any better of a leader.
Sure, its happened before, but Bush got caught and he paid the price in credibility. No, I wouldn't put the majority of fault with the state. There was a major evacuation (the biggest ever) and a plan in place. It ain't her fault that the 9th ward ignored the evacuation. Furthermore the Louisiana National Guard was one of the shining stars of the emergency effort. They did a great job and federalizing them would have done nothing but compicate their chain of command right when they had more important work to do. With the way the feds screwed up FEMA, I hate to think what they would have done with the guard. The feds had the entire Corps of Engineers and the entire regular army and the coast guard. They didn't need the Louisiana guard. It was a blatant attempt by Bush to embrarass a democratic governor to take attention away from Brownie's failures. I don't think Blaco was much of a leader during the crisis, but the state agencies, state universities, state police, and the state troops all worked their asses off and did excellent work during the crisis, especially the Wildlife and Fisheries people. I know, because I was right in the middle of it. At least she stayed out of the way of the folks who were doing their jobs.
There are still some good, capable folks in Louisiana. I'm glad for them. I just don't include Edith or Naggin' in that group and feel like more could have been done ahead of time. Of course, Edith and Naggin' probably owe large numbers of votes to the people of New Orleans who were let down.
I disagree. Federalizing them would have limited the chain of command and the Feds would have been able to more quickly coordinate the response. I'm not defending FEMA here. My personal experience is that they did an adequate job, but the task at hand was unbelievably vast and unforeseen (levees breaking). Brown just happened to be the figurehead at the desk at the time, but I'm not convinced that the response would have been any more efficient with the FEMA that was in place before Bush. The entire Katrina disaster was a debacle, but, the biggest problems were in getting people dry and fed, and I place that right at Blanco and Nagin's feet. I agree. There were superhuman efforts put forth by everybody involved, but you'll never convince me that the vilification of Bush and FEMA was nothing more than politics because the situation was impossible and a Democrat Administration would have fared no better.
I agree. But for the worst natural disaster in US history, not just for NO, but for the region, Bush has been absent, which is poor performance. There is other blame to go around, like Nagin, and the people that re-elected him. Sometimes you just can't fix stupid. Clinton's head of FEMA was at least a recognized expert on disaster preparation and recovery, and he had hired competent staff, who all quit after Brown took over, recognizing the incompetence at the top.
Villification of Bush will always have a political element. The vilification of FEMA was justly earned by FEMA. When I said Blanco stayed out of the way of the people doing the job, I meant it. Whatever decisions she made, right or wrong, she did not hamper or interfere with the emergency response effort that had been put together. But when FEMA hit town a day or two days later, they did a lot of interferring and they outright lied to some people. They did things that actually slowed and stopped efforts that were working because they were here and taking charge. And they didn't do a very good job of it. Everything they did was at turtle speed. And when the chickens came home to roost, they pointed fingers at everybody else.
We're talking about 2 different things here. FEMA's clusterf**k was in dealing with people who wanted something. Either temporary living quarters and living expenses or, in the case of many opportunists, free money. What really chapped my ass was the thousands of people standing out in the sun in the inital stages following the storm with no food or water. With the number of choppers and relief agencies in or near the city, it was inexcusable to allow those people to suffer like they did. Part of that was Blanco and Nagin's efforts to be the ones with the power and they were stymieing what efforts at Federal assistance there were.
