The slowness of the response to the horrible disaster unfolding in New Orleans is dispicable. I’m sorry to have to drag politics back into this like so many others are reluctantly doing. But the coordination of this relief effort is appalling. No one can truly be prepared for such a situation, but FEMA is mandated and budgeted to run through drills and scenarios of this magnitude.
The federal government has reduced spending on hurricane relief and preparedness repeatedly over the last few years to pay for Bushie’s war. This is the result. The bloated corpses of the New Orleans dead should be laid at Bush’s feet. Was his war worth this?
Every single available helicopter, truck, boat, national guardsman, reservist, EMT, and more should have been mobilized Tuesday morning, not Wednesday, Thursday, or even later this week and dispatched. Those people are drowning, dying of thirst and hunger by the minute in New Orleans and every spare iota of money and ability in this nation should be pouring in to get people out of there immediately.
I’m of half a mind to rent a bus, drive down there into the city and get those people out myself. I am disgusted by the self-righteous hypocritical Christian fundamentalist assholes this nation is filled with and being run by.
I know I’ve fallen on various sides of the red/blue, but I do not see how this can be attributed to the war. People are doing things and many forget that. Many also forgot that there were warnings 48 hours in advance to evacuate and I think that too often we assume that because we’re America this won’t happen to me
September 2, 2005 @ 2:15 amWell, you’re right, we shouldn’t say the hurricane’s damage is entirely the war’s fault. Even if the funding had been sustained, no one knows for sure if there would have been sufficient improvements in time for this catastrophe. No one knew when it was going to come, but it’s been known something like this could and would happen eventually.
There are a lot of people working very hard to save every life they can, and I’m incredibly thankful for those heroes. I only wish more were being done sooner to help them save everyone.
The other aspect of the people who did not evacuate is that many simply don’t own a car or even know someone they could ride with, so they just rode it out. If they had even the slightest idea this would have happened, they should have brought buses in early and evacuated those who had not already done so. The flooding caught everyone off guard, sadly.
September 2, 2005 @ 9:48 am