VERY Disturbed with Bush and the Federal Response!!!

[HAltschule]

I'm usually not this harsh but after watching the news coverage of what's been happening (or not happening really) and hearing the mayor of New Orleans and other State Reps. pleading for help, I have become extremely disturbed and disappointed with our country's leaders. I really feel for the people of New Orleans (and surrounding areas) and wish there were something we could do that would bring immediate help to save lives. I can't for the life of me understand why our government took so long to send major aid, personnel and supplies to this ravished region. We should have sent at a minimum, 10,000-20,000 army and/or marine troops there on Monday to assist with rescue. With all of the looting that has been going on, that should have been the other wake up call to send these numbers of troops to keep the peace while rescue efforts were underway. People shooting at our helicopters that are trying to evacuate vicitims from a hospital?? Hell, we'll show you, I'm going to send in 20,000 troops to kick your Arss if you try that again? That would have been my response. I cannot believe that our President and federal commanders did not order these massive numbers to deploy to this region. It is unbelievable.

And now with the article below saying that the federal gov't will step in and "bolster" the rescue effort b/c it is unsatisfactory is just the icing on the cake. The ENTIRE nation knew that this needed to be done 5 days ago!!! Not 6 days after the event. Our President dropped the ball again in a huge way and reinforces my opinion that he is very unqualified to be our leader. I leave you with this: Where is the money, troops and aid that we've sent overseas now that this occurred in our own backyard? I feel for the people of New Orleans (and surrounding areas) and pray that god creates many, many miracles, because our incompetent President surely isn't doing much to help!!!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9157866/

 

[Jeff Snyder]

My thoughts in http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8294 - "Is the FEMA dictor living on Mars?"

 

[J West]

Based on your remarks, it seems you don't have much idea about how slow goverment works, esp. on the federal level.

It's been said before and I'll say it again...FEMA is an oversight organization. They don't have bunkers full of equipment and supplies ready to go at a moments notice. FEMA coordinates local and state-based resources and provides $$ ot purchase supplies and rents trucks to put them on. FEMA does studies on EM and oversee's training, not stockpile supplies and bulldozers.

As for the Nat'l Guard, the membership is comprised of citizens like you and me. When the NG is activated for something as large as this incident, they start pulling resources from other states. When this happens, 1000's of members get activated, but they don't pull out 10 minutes later. It takes many hours to many days, depending. If a NG platoon in Colorado got called up on Tuesday, odds are they won't ship out for a few days. Add travel time to that, and they'll wouldn't be there until today or over the weekend at the earliest.

You can bitch that this is Bush's fault, but no other president would be doing it any faster. Any president that was sitting in office on Monday would have the same set of tools to work with. Could some things have been different? I'm sure there have been breakdowns in the effort (Cause in point: FEMA Director and the NO Convention Center...there was no excuse for that), but if you think the scapegoat should be the president, your blame is misplaced.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

The main problem I have with this is the speed with which the relief is being brought in. Well, that and the fact that there seems to be an unprecendented disconnect between what federal officials are saying (FEMA director, etc) and what is really happening. They KNEW this was going to be a catastrophe. Heck, the states were declared disaster areas BEFORE the hurricane hit. DC politicians have said that they are working as quickly as possible, and they even allocated money before the hurricane hit as evidenced by the disaster area declaration. I can't even begin to think about how slow the response would have been if these places weren't declared disaster areas ahead of time.

 

[HAltschule]

I think the President could have recognized the urgent need to save lives and property and "pulled rank". In doing this, my main gripe is that he should have immediately dispatched actuall Army or Marine troops to the region immediately when the problems started. I'm not talking the National Guard, I'm talking abour soldiers with automatic rifles, grenades and tear gas. Whether this meets some of the dispatch criteria for this kind of situation, I don't know. But I do know that as a leader you rewrite the rules as needed. And this CLEARLY was one of those cases. If Al Qaida was shooting at our helicopters in Iraq, do you think we would sit back and let it happen. No way. There would be a full assault and deployment mission launched to unroot them right away. and this crap was happening in N.O.....by our own people. Very sad.

 

[John Farley]

You can bitch that this is Bush's fault, but no other president would be doing it any faster. Any president that was sitting in office on Monday would have the same set of tools to work with. Could some things have been different? I'm sure there have been breakdowns in the effort (Cause in point: FEMA Director and the NO Convention Center...there was no excuse for that), but if you think the scapegoat should be the president, your blame is misplaced.

I've said it in another thread and I will say it again here. The president is the Commander in Chief. Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk that said "The buck stops here." Bush could have mobilized the federal troops on Monday as suggested above by the first poster in this thread. He didn't. Not Monday, not Tuesday, not Wednesday or Thursday. People died. Yes, the scope of the disaster has been unprecedented, but the response has been woefully inadequate. Bush is in charge. No excuses.

 

[Anonymous]

there seems to be an unprecendented disconnect between what federal officials are saying (FEMA director, etc) and what is really happening.

If you think back over the last few years, this is NOTHING new. :x

 

[Jason Montano]

I can't for the life of me understand why our government took so long to send major aid, personnel and supplies to this ravished region. We should have sent at a minimum, 10,000-20,000 army and/or marine troops there on Monday to assist with rescue. With all of the looting that has been going on, that should have been the other wake up call to send these numbers of troops to keep the peace while rescue efforts were underway. People shooting at our helicopters that are trying to evacuate vicitims from a hospital?? Hell, we'll show you, I'm going to send in 20,000 troops to kick your Arss if you try that again?

Do you have any idea what it takes to mobilize a Brigade ~3000 personnel? Weeks if not months of operations and logistics planning. Let alone mobilizing an entire division if you would expect 10-20k personnel. That does not happen overnight and would put the lives of those service men and women as well as those in NO at risk. No commander will allow that to happen especially not the Commander in Chief. Step back and think about what goes on behind the scenes, no answer is as easy as saying lets just send in the Army. On another note Regular Army units are not properly trained for situations such as this. I'm sure that if a civilian were to attack a military force and was killed the same people asking why military are not there would be asking why they were.

 

[HAltschule]

With all due respect, I think our government could get troops there almost immediately if they really wanted to. The rules have been rewritten here. The job of a commading officer is also to adapt to the changing environment. We don't have the time to wait. We're not talking about AL Qaida missionaries here. We're talking about thugs and rioters that are taking advantage of a disaster like none other we've seen in the U.S. The Army or Marines are certainly more able to handle this then then the National Guard...whom are civilians, whom will take a long time to mobilize. The armed forces have the weaponry to "combat" these thugs immediately. No extensive war plan needed. It's almost like guerilla warfare. Massive Infiltration and cautious patrols. Shoot to kill if threatened or if non-essantial looters continue. No questions asked.

If our military CAN NOT handle this kind of assignment, then our leadership is even more unqualified and inadequate than I thought.

 

[Dan9]

Very scary....

With all due respect, I think our government could get troops there almost immediately if they really wanted to. The rules have been rewritten here. (snip)

I fear that your posts border on the truly scary... you really seem to be wanting to ditch the whole constitution. And then, for a reason only known to you, turn it into some sort of an axe to grind!

There will no doubt be more than enough blame to go around, but that is hardly an excuse for wanting to turn the commander in chief into a military dictator who can send the military into any state at his behest.

I like many am watching the WWL stream... so they show pics of a school bus barn *full of buses* underwater, buses they so desperately need. Who failed to secure those when possible?

Reading the WWL blog, they report that in some police districs up to 60% of the officers have abandoned their oath (by not showing up.) You will probably blame Bush for that too.

If you are into forensics then why not collect all the data that is before you? Again, it is likely that everyone will carry some blame here, but until you can explain to me why the primary responsible parties (the city and state) failed in their duties I'm not buying that this should lay at the doorsteps of the Whitehouse.

Dan9

PS I've checked stormtrack website for quite a while, (even tried unsuccessfully to register last year,) and always enjoyed these boards. It is my observation that while the board owner does a great service to many, this open Katrina section will soon need to shut down due to a rapid expansion in emotional and politically motivated issues. Important topics in themselves, but probably about as far afield from storm chasing as can be.

 

[Rob_Davis]

Montano is correct. What you are suggesting is not allowed by our constitution. And, as he also notes, combat troops are not trained for the mission even if the constitution did allow it.

This country couldn't handle troops killing Americans anyhow. They can't even handle them drowning after refusing to evacuate an impending disaster. If troops killed a single person, there would be such an outcry and mass of congressional inquiries that it would be the top story on the news for the next five years. Then they would put a couple of 19 year old privates in prison for the rest of their lives to make a statement, and let those who ordered them in there retire at $50k a year.

 

[Anonymous]

This is a sad day in America......we couldn't help our own people, now thousands are dead.

 

[Rob_Davis]

This is a sad day in America......we couldn't help our own people, now thousands are dead.

Thousands didn't help themselves. You play, you pay.

 

[Hawaii]

Did Bush just say "The response results are acceptable" ?? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

 

[Anonymous]

This is a sad day in America......we couldn't help our own people, now thousands are dead.

Thousands didn't help themselves. You play, you pay.

You're one cold, callous SOB. No two ways about it. I don't give a shit if they couldn't or if they wouldn't, those are human beings drowning and starving to death.