Breaking News: There is now video evidence that President Bush knew there was a massive hurricane heading for New Orleans and yet he did nothing to stop it!
Yeah, that's about as ridiculous as some of the things I've heard about this stupid video. The video is a briefing that the President received 24 hours before Katrina hit. Critics are saying that this proves that the President had "full awareness" of the severity of the storm, that the White House knew the levies wouldn't hold, and yet they did nothing.
Funny, my research shows that the President declared Louisiana a state of emergency on August 26th, a full three days before the hurricane hit, and asked the local authorities to evacuate their respective locations. (Not to say that the local authorities weren't paying much attention, but on the 27th, Gov. Blanco asked the President to declare Louisiana a state of emergency. Psst! He already did!) Mayor Nagin didn't call for an evacuation until late on the 27th, though FEMA had sent over 100 buses to buffer the 400 the city already had, and he didn't make it mandatory until 9AM on the 28th. The storm would hit 5 hours later.
On the video, the national weather service can be clearly heard saying, "No one can say with any confedence whether the levees will be topped." This is very different than saying "No one can say with any confedence whether the levees will hold." The first expects them to hold, the latter does not. Nearly all of the news outlets that I've heard regarding this video have been saying that Bush was told the levees would fail. If you were told that no one can say with any confedence that the levees will be topped. What would you think?
Another major criticism of the President regarding this video is that the President didn't ask any questions. Are we grasping at straws here? Anybody else think that, if the video showed the President asking questions, the news stations would have said something like "Woefully unprepared a mere 24 hours before Katrina hits, the President can be seen here asking a myriad of questions, trying to bring the White House up to speed." He didn't need to ask questions. He'd declared Louisiana and Mississippi states of emergency already. He'd been briefed on the storm for the last week.
Do not misread this post (this is mostly for you Doctor, I'm trying to be clear here): The Federal government failed. The local governments failed. "Fault" can be sprinkled from Nagen to Blanco to Brown (FEMA) to Bush to The Sierra Club to the courts who didn't allow the reinforcement of the levees. This was a disaster and this post is not intended to defend the Federal government. I am railing against the news agencies who seem to think there is a story in this video, and the "we'll-do-anything-to-find-fault-solely-with-the-party-in-power" people who are loving this non-story.
I think the news should be 1/2 hour daily. The full hour news programs and 24 hour news stations are causing producers to call non-news worthy events "news-worthy" and "indepth analysis" (A.K.A. speculation) has become a common annoyance. When you've only got a half hour, you have to make time for what's important instead of filling time with what isn't.
But that's all just my opinion.
1 comment:
No matter how that had gone down, people would be complaining. Had an evacuation been ordered and then the storm not been as bad, people would have complained that unnecessary money was spent. I think that the majority of the fault here lies with those that refused to leave. Shame on you! Didn't your mother teach you to follow emergency evacuation instructions?
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