Bush wants to know "what went right and what went wrong"

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I just read a New York times article today about effective evacuation plans in Virginia

Magic Marker Strategy

Instead of relying on a "Good Samaritan" policy - the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors - the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.

"It's cold, but it's effective," Mr. Judkins explained.

Maybe that would get people to evacuate.
 
I'm still placing the majority of the blame on the city and state authorities -- halfway decent planning would have kept a lot of the carnage at bay. I keep hearing that a good number of city buses were locked up and not being used -- folks could have been shipped in mass to the Superdome.

After the levees broke, things didn't go well -- that's a problem shared by all levels of government. However, I'm getting sick of hearing the mayor attempt to pin all the blame on the feds ... either he truly cares about his city, or he's grasping at the straws that form his political future.
 
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury on New Orleans: "Americans Are Being Brainwashed"
Mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler"

Infowars Network | September 6 2005
By Steve Watson & Alex Jones
Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Regan administration.

Roberts followed up his commentary Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die with an interview on The Alex Jones show on Monday 5th September 2005. The former Assistant Secretary had noted of the New Orleans disaster "If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history." and went on to spell out how the disaster was left to happen. He succeeded these comments on Monday by laying out the facts again and asserting that the Federal government has been criminally negligent and should be held up to accountability.

Mr Roberts believed that such comments would bring him much criticism from so called Patriots (the flag waving kind), yet he was surprised at the amount of people who agreed and even informed him that it was far worse then what he'd gone on record with.

Roberts reviewed the way in which the federal government had slashed funding for flood prevention schemes and pumped everything into the war in Iraq and the war on Terror. He also went on to admit that the military was turning on the people, treating them as subjects, overturning the Posse Comitatus Act.

Roberts agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to "save the day". He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.

"The power of the Federal Government is now greater than at any time, it'll never go back and the Posse Comitatus Act has been eroding ever since it was passed in 1878..." Roberts asserted.

Roberts further commented "There is no excuse for this, we have never had in our history the federal government take a week to respond to a disaster...this is the first time ever that the help was not mobilized in advance. The proper procedure is that everything is mobilized and ready to go"

Mr Roberts commented that the American people are being "brainwashed" and no longer believe what the founding fathers said over and over, that your worst enemy is always your own government and never confuse Patriotism with support for the government. He asserted that the mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler" and that the government is deadly dangerous, "you can't let the military take over policing".

On the question of where this is all leading and what the government is gearing up for, Mr Roberts suggested that "It does look like there is a push coming from inside the bowels of the police authorities and it seems to be independent of whoever the President is or who or whatever party is in office. It just gets worse and it's hard to say that it's Bush doing it, he may not even know what's going on... it's enough for us to say that New Orleans demonstrated massive federal incompetence, if it were laid on private people would be tantamount to criminal negligence... some kind of accountability has to be exercised"

The private corporations own and run everything and are turning America into a third world police state, when questioned as to how we can stop this Mr Roberts stated:

"The longer it goes on it will be harder and harder to stop...It depends on how much resistance or what kind of resistance they meet, but I think one thing we can do is demand accountability for this failure, do not buy the Karl Rove lie that this was a failure of State and Local Government"

Roberts urged listeners to look at the Patriot Act, which suspends Habeas Corpus, where they can now suspend you indefinitely, a massive erosion of civil liberties. He was quick to point out though that we should not assign the government omnipotence, we can make people aware of the situation and try to explain illogical actions that have no reasonable explanation.

Roberts read out an email from an emergency management official who said that the feds are involved in everything they do, everything has to be approved by the feds. FEMA sets the table, Mr Roberts suggested, every major agency in New Orleans has been federalized, the State and Local officials have no authority.

"They might screw up occasionally but why is it that NOTHING that was supposed to be done was done?" Roberts questioned.

"The whole problem is...failure, massive unacceptable failure, criminal negligence... it has caused the US it's largest and most strategic international Port through which 25% of all our oil and gas comes... look at the price of gasoline, this is a tremendous impact... I don't see how a recession can be avoided... We have lost our most influential port through what appears to be INTENTIONAL incompetence, it's very hard to understand"

Roberts went on to stress that this event is WORSE than 9/11 because it was announced days ahead of the event and contingency plans were intentionally ignored. The officials on the scene have said there was a complete stand down of the government and intentional incompetence. Furthermore they did nothing ON PURPOSE in order to provoke the resulting chaos and anarchy so they could say "look how out of control everything is - we have to have limits on freedom and troops on the streets.

They intentionally sat there while people died and a city the size of the United Kingdom was lost.
 
norinrad21 said:
They intentionally sat there while people died and a city the size of the United Kingdom was lost.
Listen man, the guy responsible for the response got asked to quit his job adminitering horse shows. We should be glad he didn't spontaneously implode when this happened. There's lots of good people, working hard. It's hard work!
 
Things Bush did before:

Removed funding from FEMA (and yes, as did other presidents)

Remove FEMA from a cabinent level position and cram it into Homeland Security

Appoint totally unqualified asshats to the highest positions of FEMA (leading to all kinds of retarded decisions)

Ship our national guard to Iraq

Things Bush did after:

Fly to Arizona to eat cake with John McCain

Fly to San Diego to play guitar

Failed to authorize troop deployment promptly (involving a delay of several days)

Failed to authorize the USS Bataan to begin rescue operations immediately

Stop helicopter traffic during his time on the ground in affected areas

Pull aside 50 firemen to walk around with him for photo-ops instead of help those needing rescue

Attempt to have Louisiana cede jurisdiction to the federal level in order to inevitably pass all the blame off
-----

And to all those idiots trying to give Homeland Security and FEMA a free ride while only blaming local and states levels...
Homeland Security website said:
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort.
 
Dan said:
Things Bush did before:

Removed funding from FEMA (and yes, as did other presidents)

Remove FEMA from a cabinent level position and cram it into Homeland Security

Appoint totally unqualified asshats to the highest positions of FEMA (leading to all kinds of retarded decisions)

Ship our national guard to Iraq

Things Bush did after:

Fly to Arizona to eat cake with John McCain

Fly to San Diego to play guitar

Failed to authorize troop deployment promptly (involving a delay of several days)

Failed to authorize the USS Bataan to begin rescue operations immediately

Stop helicopter traffic during his time on the ground in affected areas

Pull aside 50 firemen to walk around with him for photo-ops instead of help those needing rescue

Attempt to have Louisiana cede jurisdiction to the federal level in order to inevitably pass all the blame off
-----

And to all those idiots trying to give Homeland Security and FEMA a free ride while only blaming local and states levels...
Homeland Security website said:
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort.

Good Post. A couple more things:

- Allowed unsustainable coastal development and hastened coastal erosion by relaxing wetland protection regulations upheld by his father and the Clinton administrations.
- Not cutting his vacation IMMEDIATELY to pass through the bill for hurricane aid. (Guess what, he did do so in another instance involving Terry Schiavo)
- Feeding the public bold-face lies like "no one expected the levee system to be breached" when FEMA just did a simulation with a hypothetical Hurriance Pam last year coming to the conclusion that levee breaches was definite possibility.
 
What went right:
I voted...

What went wrong:
You still got re-elected...

Oh wait we're not talking about that? My bad. <sheepish grin>

I am glad that Bush is looking forward to sitting on the patio of Trent Lott's reconstructed home.

On a more serious note they city and state shouldn't get a free pass... but then again neither should FEMA or our president... whose actions leading up to and right after the hurricane as highlighted in the AP article were just bizarre.
 
What went wrong? The hurricane switched paths like 3 times and got larger than anyone anticipated. What went right? wtf..bush come on...
 
ToxicAdam got banned? Awesome and yet not... the time of the stupid neocons on this board is coming to an end... its a shame because they do so well to showcase how fucking loony and detestable their thoughts and opinions tend to be.
 
Let's not forget that 1/3 of Louisiana's national guard troops, around 4000 total, who could have been pre-deployed and ready to assist in New Orleans, are currently in Iraq.
 
SteveMeister said:
Let's not forget that 1/3 of Louisiana's national guard troops, around 4000 total, who could have been pre-deployed and ready to assist in New Orleans, are currently in Iraq.

1/3? Damn..... You just know Bush is gonna get out of this with no prob... FEMA director will probably get the boot and take most of the heat, and then the rest of the heat will be pushed on local and state gov't for not requesting federal help quick enough.
 
I'm just waiting to see who will take the fall first, Am thinking the Mayor and Gov will take the first fall. Georgie will be okay as always, its like that baby whos always protected by daddy and many uncles
 
FEMA definitely shoulders much of the blame in this case. They answer directly to the President and yet no one in the organization knew what to do or what was going on. How in the world FEMA had no idea THOUSANDS of people were holed up in the convention center is beyond belief.

FEMA is designed to take over disaster operations immediately, and they failed miserably.

Worst Federal agency ever.
 
Local and State government should get the blame for the poor evacuation and planning for the hurricane. However, once those levees broke, IT BECAME A FEDERAL ISSUE and ALL the blame from that point onward should go to FEMA and the federal government.
 
Sal Paradise Jr said:
Local and State government should get the blame for the poor evacuation and planning for the hurricane. However, once those levees broke, IT BECAME A FEDERAL ISSUE and ALL the blame from that point onward should go to FEMA and the federal government.

You nailed it. I think it's that simple, which means everyone is to blame and both local/state and federal government failed to do their job properly.

From Monday morning and on, the responsibility rests with the Federal government regardless of how much the local/state officials screwed up before hand.
 
Delay, looking like a deer in the headlights, is trying his best to deflect blame, but he'll have a hard time doing it when he's saying one thing while there are reports all over the news about how Republicans in Congress are blaming federal level response in private meetings, indicating a completely different spin than the one he's trying to portray.

They think shit is bad now - wait until we get nightly news footage and stories about them dragging bodies out of NO and the body count goes up nightly.
 
Outlaw Pro Mod said:
[Quotes below are from Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Commander of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, and Chief of Engineers, and are excerpted from his remarks during
a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Special Briefing for the media via conference
call on Thursday, September 1, 2005 at 1 p.m. EDT. A full transcript is available
from the Public Affairs Office at (202) 761-0011.]

There have been suggestions that inadequate funding for levee projects
delayed their completion and resulted in the flooding of New Orleans.

GEN. STROCK: "In fact, the levee failures we saw were in areas of the projects
that were at their full project design... So that part of the project was in place, and
had this project been fully complete ...
[West Bank, Southeast Louisiana, and
Lake Ponchartrain] it's my opinion, based on the intensity of this storm, that the
flooding of the Central Business District and the French Quarter would still have
occurred. So I do not see that the level of funding is really a contributing factor in
this case."


I find it odd that one could make an informed decision about what could have happened if certain measures were taken when the levee breaches have ocurred and no formal investigation has taken place to ascertain what really happened.
 
Hmmm...lets compare shall we. The Last Time we lost an American City. San Fran, April 18th, 1906.

The earthquake struck at 5:13 AM.

By 7 AM federal troops had reported to the mayor.

By 8 AM they were patrolling the entire downtown area and searching for survivors.

The second quake struck at 8:14 AM.

By 10:05 AM the USS Chicago was on its way from San Diego to San Francisco; by 10:30 the USS Preble had landed a medical team and set up an emergency hospital.

By 11 AM large parts of the city were on fire; troops continued to arrive throughout the day, evacuating people from the areas threatened by fire to emergency shelters and Golden Gate Park.

St. Mary's hospital was destroyed by the fire at 1 PM, with no loss of life, the staff and patients having already been evacuated across the bay to Oakland.

By 3 PM troops had shot several looters, and dynamited buildings to make a firebreak; by five they had buried dozens of corpses, the morgue and the police pistol range being unable to hold any more.

At 8:40 PM General Funston requested emergency housing - tents and shelters - from the War Department in Washington; all of the tents in the U.S. Army were on their way to San Francisco by 4:55 AM the next morning.

Prisoners were evacuated to Alcatraz, and by April 20 (two days after the earthquake) the USS Chicago had reached San Francisco, where it evacuated 20,000 refugees

Or can remember Hurricane Floyd...

In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd -- a category 3 -- was bearing down the
Carolinas and Virginia.President Clinton was in Christchurch, New Zealand - meeting with President Jiang of China. He made the proclamation that only Presidents can make and declared the areas affected by Floyd "Federal Disaster Areas" so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to
coordinate the rescue efforts. This all one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.

Or even big daddy bush for Hurricane Andrew...

Once again, President Bush (41) -- August, 1992 -- was in the midst of a brutal campaign for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to Washington where he martialed the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent
in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.

'69 with Hurricane Camille...

In August of 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.

I think both parties are to blame, but if you look at the past (and even over 100 years ago...), this makes the currenct Federal Gov. look pretty damn terrible.
 
I'm sure Bush wants to get right to the bottom of this, just like anyone remotely connected with the leaking of CIA agents info would be dealt with.

a fucking arabian horse expert
Actually form what I've heard and read, horse "expert" is pushing it.
 
Zaptruder said:
ToxicAdam got banned? Awesome and yet not... the time of the stupid neocons on this board is coming to an end... its a shame because they do so well to showcase how fucking loony and detestable their thoughts and opinions tend to be.
Those "stupid neocons" helped to cancel out at least some of the vitriolic tirades launched with apparent impunity by the liberal loons, conspiracy theorists, and hippie/commie scum of GAF. Without their right-wing counterparts, they're gradually becoming more hateful and brazen with their rhetoric.


Now this place is almost completely unbalanced.
 
Spike Spiegel said:
Those "stupid neocons" helped to cancel out at least some of the vitriolic tirades launched with apparent impunity by the liberal loons, conspiracy theorists, and hippie/commie scum of GAF. Without their right-wing counterparts, they're gradually becoming more hateful and brazen with their rhetoric.


Now this place is almost completely unbalanced.

Lucky for us we still have you around...
 
Spike Spiegel said:
Those "stupid neocons" helped to cancel out at least some of the vitriolic tirades launched with apparent impunity by the liberal loons, conspiracy theorists, and hippie/commie scum of GAF. Without their right-wing counterparts, they're gradually becoming more hateful and brazen with their rhetoric.


Now this place is almost completely unbalanced.
Just out of curiousity, would you say that I am
A) A liberal loon,
B) Conspiracy theorist,
C) Hippie/commie scum, -OR-
D) An almost mortal lock to be elected to the US Senate in 2008 as a dashing populist in Georgia?
 
I'd vote for you, Duke. :D But I ain't in GA.

That said, Reps changed their tune today. Now they're playing up the hero part to avoid criticism, and using the blanket blame game, "local, state and federal, blah blah blah." While this is true, this is just gonna result in a shitty year-long commission that makes a small group, isolated from the administration, into the fall guys, and then move on waving the flag. I hate hearing that it's too early to start placing blame. No dammit, NOW is the time to place the blame. While people still care and are still paying attention. This is the 9/11 Commission Part Deux. Your tax dollars at waste with results sometime next year that accomplish nothing and probably result in more bureaucracy. :( PEACE.
 
Spike Spiegel said:
Those "stupid neocons" helped to cancel out at least some of the vitriolic tirades launched with apparent impunity by the liberal loons, conspiracy theorists, and hippie/commie scum of GAF. Without their right-wing counterparts, they're gradually becoming more hateful and brazen with their rhetoric.


Now this place is almost completely unbalanced.

When it comes to intelligent discussion, it will largely favour the anti-Bushians. That's right, anti-Bushians. It's not about being left or right, it's about pointing out the obvious, that the Bush Administration is doing and has been doing a horrible job running the country.

I'm not a fan of the Democrats either...but I will admit that they would have done a far better job reacting to this situation. After a natural disaster like this...the country needs some "bleeding hearts".
 
Something to nibble on:


   This is a post from a fellow over in Merritt Is, FL, a reporter who's been researching what went on before the storm hit

     On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center took the unprecedented action of calling Nagin and Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of New Orleans and they said they'd take it under consideration. This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves before it was destroyed.

   President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act).


      Just before midnight
Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up.


      He was told that they didn't think
it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet. After the President's final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.

   Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation.

      After a personal plea from the President, Mayor Nagin agreed to order an
evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting and authorizing federal action.


      In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster
area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President's legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops - but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.

   Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to New Orleans for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships.


      Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency
preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city's website was never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or coordinating into any planning - though the document implies that they were.

   The suffering people of New Orleans need to be asking some hard questions as do we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the multi-state mutual aid pack activation documents until Wednesday which further delayed the legal deployment of National Guard from adjoining states.


      Or maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should
have commandeered 500 Greyhound busses to help him when according to his own emergency plan and documents he claimed to have over 500 busses at his disposal to use between the local school busses and the city transportation busses - but he never raised a finger to prepare them or activate them.

   This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of thousands more suffering, but it's certainly not a time for people to be pointing fingers and trying to find a bigger dog to blame for local corruption and incompetence. Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in the future.
 

The Posse Comitatus Act is a federal law of the United States (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed in 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, and was intended to prohibit Federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The original act only referred to the Army, but the Air Force was added in 1956 and the Navy and Marine Corps have been included by a regulation of the Department of Defense. This law is mentioned whenever it appears that the Department of Defense is interfering in domestic disturbances.
 
 
Spike Spiegel said:
Except that I don't play that game anymore. I like posting here. :D

Maybe it's just me, but I'm certainly not opposed to opinions of the more conservative type, provided we're talking about more intelligent posts than what the general populace posts here. ToxicAdam and co. occasionally make some valid points, but while they're quick to dub GAF as some festering, extreme leftist stronghold (which I can't entirely dispute thanks to the sheer amount of people here), that argument is really only a matter of numbers. My only real beef with them is when there's a total failure to attribute virtually any blame on this administration or those responsible, whether out of spite to counter the anti-Bush sentiments here, a blind devotion to the current Republican mindset, or whatever. If you want to engage in political discussions, by all means, do so. Just do so intelligently; and that's something I wish more people would do here, period.
 
As a person who has been through the destruction of a city (small) by a hurricane/typhoon/cyclone/wirly wirly i've been watching the CNN coverage in China with a degree of incredulty.

WTF is going on there. From what i've seen it looks like a fuck up of monumental proportions.
Don't go blaming the police and other emergency services in New Orleans like i saw some idiot the other day do. They have got their own problems with destroyed houses, safety of their families etc.

It appears from reading here that the state and local govt should have taken some preventative measures, but my understanding from watching CNN is that it took 4 -5 days before any real help arrived.

All i can say is that u need to go back to the drawing board for this shit, because it obviously aint working at the moment.


Image of the damage i lived through
cyC973SPCT.jpg




PS I saw fox for the first time in HK, this channel is clearly a joke. Isn't it??
 
Macam said:
Maybe it's just me, but I'm certainly not opposed to opinions of the more conservative type, provided we're talking about more intelligent posts than what the general populace posts here. ToxicAdam and co. occasionally make some valid points, but while they're quick to dub GAF as some festering, extreme leftist stronghold (which I can't entirely dispute thanks to the sheer amount of people here), that argument is really only a matter of numbers. My only real beef with them is when there's a total failure to attribute virtually any blame on this administration or those responsible, whether out of spite to counter the anti-Bush sentiments here, a blind devotion to the current Republican mindset, or whatever. If you want to engage in political discussions, by all means, do so. Just do so intelligently; and that's something I wish more people would do here, period.

IAWTP 100%. Oh, and someone on the right that can mount an intelligent discussion without resorting to talking points, Christopher Hitchens, has a few words to say about the response effort. Really good stuff
 
AB 101 said:
In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster
area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President's legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops - but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.

Where is this article from? Because I've NEVER heard that first sentence in any other article on the time table around the Hurricane before.
 
Bush also issued an executive order on Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of the hurricane to pay below the prevailing wage, drawing rebukes from two congressional Democrats who said stricken families need good wages to rebuild their lives.

...wtf?
 
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