Redstate

In a few days the country will be commemorating 9/11  and our leaders should be ashamed to show their face.

Four years after 9/11, THIS  is the best the government can do in response to a major emergency?

What if the levees were destroyed by terrorist bombs? Is this the emergency response we would have expected?

Gunfire Disrupts Evacuation in New Orleans

commentary simply reiterates Thomas' point in his choice of adjectives.

Cheap shots and not much else.

what?

That you have absolutely no understanding of the role of the New Oreleans Police Department.

Fine you made your point.

I agree with this. The whole "Nat'l Guard in Iraq" thing is a side issue to the main issue of people sitting around in New Orleans "waiting to die." Where's the food? Where's the water? Why didn't Bush ask Congress to come back? What in the world is going on? Incompetence or negligence are increasingly becoming the binary choices facingour assessment of the government response.

These accusations that streiff addresses may seem beyond the pale now, but they'll drift away. What won't drift away is the perception that Bush is completely lost on this one.

Republicans would better spend their effort propping Bush up and prodding him along rather than ripping apart completely lefty theories wholly irrelevant to anything that matters now.

will happen here as happened after 9-11. The press coverage for the first days revolved around "Bush lost control."

There is no way possible this story is going to play out that way in New Orleans.

Sorry Streiff, not good enough.

"Cheap shots" you say? Have you seen the images? An American city is flirting with chaos and anarchy. People are starving and dehydrating. Bodies with flies on the streets of America.

I'll ask the question again: Is this the government response you expected after a major post 9/11 disaster?

I have to say other than if you've got all the answers why aren't you in a car on your way to Louisiana.

Other than what Thomas has said more eloquently.

Other than if you think you're going to continue a series of posts devoid of content you are sadly mistaken.

Expressing horror over what appears to be a poorly executed--and far worse, poorly planned-- repsonse to a tradgedy is no cheap shot.  

You're defending against a political play that the vast majority of us are just not running.

I hoped and truly expected an efficient emergency response. I assure you my shock is earnest, ample and apolitical.  

Strieff:

All politics is local.  Before you blame the federal government, look to the political hacks in the state and city governements.  It's Thursday, the Prez has got troops, ships, equipment, and supplies on scene or shortly to arrive.  It is our system of government to leave to the state and local level first response.  Don't let your biases get in the way of the facts.

your shock is immaterial and irrelevant as are your comments.

This may come as a shock to you, but your preceptions of the planning are not the subject up for discussion. If you have something to say on the subject say it. If you want to continue to sighing and gazing at your navel then go back over to dKos.

Sorry....my post meant to address ampleforth's comments...

When did the President of the United States become responsible for the police, the fire department, and the ambulances in American cities?

These comments are ridiculous. People know they are ridicuous.

I have to say other than if you've got all the answers why aren't you in a car on your way to Louisiana.

LOL. Nice response. Kinda of like the lefty argument: "if you support the Iraq War why are'nt you signing up?"

"Other than if you think you're going to continue a series of posts devoid of content you are sadly mistaken."

Wow, that did'nt take long.

People look at what they see on TV, and wonder why more isn't being done.

It is.  There are hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies and equipment on the way.  The problem is "how does it get there?"

It has to go by road (which has to be cleared first) or train (the tracks have to be cleared and inspected/repaired first), which have to cross bridges (many of which are damaged or destroyed).  Some is coming in by ship.  Ships move slow compared to ground transport, and need to be loaded first.  Air?  Only a couple of working airports in the region, and air freight is really, really expensive and restricted in mass.

Oh, yeah, and they have to have some sort of organization to the mess, so people don't end up with six semis full of wool winter blankets and no water or food.

Sending in Guard troops without a huge logistics train behind them is less than useless.  They have to line up food, water, and other supplies for weeks before they even think about going some of the places they're going to have to go, or they'll just be refugees themselves, and about as effective.

want to start a discussion on planning here.

Planning for this was the exclusive responsiblity of New Orleans and the State of Lousiana. I say again, exclusive. There is no federal role in planning for response to these things. The federal role is to provide resources.

The fact that two people posting on this haven't taken the time to even try to acquire a vague understanding of how emergency response works just shows they aren't serious people.

you aren'f funny and you obviously don't know anything about this subject. So I really don't see how you plan on participating in a discussion with neither wit nor wisdom going your way.

If you want to comment on the story, in the context of the story, feel free. Otherwise your posts are going to disappear faster than you can make them.

When rescuers are being fired on, you need the military and national guard to help safely and securely get people out of there. As bad as it is now, it will only get worse.

You're just dismissing this argument without ever having actually refuted it.

Everyone seems to have their own opinion about what should have happened or could have happened to stop this event. Additionally, people are going on and on about what needs to be done and what isn't being done. People are being "Monday Morning Quarterbacks" without all the facts.

Let's look at those facts:

• No matter how much money was put into the levee's, a 15ft levee will not hold back a 22ft storm surge.
• Kyoto, global warming or anything else the "environmental wackos" can blame for this won't stand. It was a natural disastewr, an act of God, nothing more, nothing less.
• The armed forces are responding to help. The Navy is sending eight ships, including a hospital ship, amphibious ships and an aircraft carrier to help in disaster relief. These ships are coming from Norfolk, Virginia, so response isn't going to be instantaneous.
• Help cannot appear overnight, as much as people want it to. Supplies have to be loaded, people mobilized, equipment checked, and this takes time.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic or unfeeling, I'm being realistic. There are thousands of people with millions of pounds of food, water and other equipment on its way to the Gulf Coast. It won't get there right away, but it will get there, as quickly as humanly possible.

I honestly think the immediacy with which people expect response is due, in a large part, to the media. The media keeps pointing out how much suffering is going on, how little help there is, and people across the U.S. and around the world see this and as "Where are you George Bush?" I know for a fact that the Navy here in Norfolk have been working around the clock since Katrina hit to get ships loaded with supplies and underway to get to the Gulf Coast to help.

Your government is doing its part to help. Don't be a "Monday Morning Quarterback" and try to second guess what "could have been "or "should have happened" before and after Katrina hit. It won't help the people in need.

just is not true. The fact that you can say it puts you in the "not serious" category.

And if someone says the sky is orange, as both of you are, there is no reason to refute it.

As I have told your fellow traveler. Comment on the story or leave. Your choice.

To have everything all mucked up for some period of time.

I know we all want instant gratification -- or in your case, a quick shot at the President -- but here in the reality that the reality-based community left behind, we haven't developed the transporters and warp engines needed to make this all better instantaneously.

How do you think we get everything to the disaster site? Well, the elves have offered a covenant of the Ten Nations, but since the last Human-Elven war, it's been hard even agreeing on the shape of the table (and whether it should be made of wood!).

We mortals need roads, functioning airports (and roads attached to them), railroads, ports, docks... you know, silly little things that aren't there any more.

Or Superman. But Kerry stuck some red Kryptonite in Bush's hands during the debate, and without any blue Kryptonite, he's in bad shape.

I'd say again, however, that the far more (politically) damaging charge is the claim that Bush underfunded the ACE work on the New Orleans levees.  (See here:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509010170sep01,1,585334
6.story?coll=chi-news-hed).  That's a much more difficult charge to defend, because it's within the President's purview.  Moreover, the correct answer to the charge -- that ACE projects are always underfunded -- is not a very satisfying one.

As I remarked on Thomas's post, I think that this has the potential to be a monumental political disaster for Bush.  And it won't matter in the least that the Nat'l guard story is BS (as you rightly note).

Despite my assessment of the potential for political damage to Bush (below), I largely agree with this post.

if you want it to be a disaster.

I think if you want to explain to the American people why it is our collective responsibility to pay for this system as a priority over every thing else, knock yourself out.

If you think state governors... or very many members of Congress... are going to glom onto this when they know their own state projects will be slashed to pay for the system I think you're mistaken.

..who were complaining that Bush was not providing enough funds to cities for first responders.  Now, they conveniently forget who controls the first response.  But soon enough, the arguement will turn back to Bush not giving enough to the cities, and the response in Day 1 will again be his fault.

What exactly did local Governors ask for this week (from the Federal Government) that they didn't get?

If the New Orleans levees were the problem, then this could have happened from the rainfall from a tropical storm. It wouldn't have taken a hurricane to do it.

One thing I didn't notice up to last week, was the Mayor of New Orleans telling tourists not to come to New Orleans, because the city was too dangerous--just a rainstorm away from disaster. I never heard that warning from anyone in charge in Louisiana.

I think you need to read the Chicago Tribune story before you dismiss this as a nonstarter politically.  It has all the elements (facially-appealing numbers, former Republican who was allegedly ousted by the Administration after complaining that the ACE works around NO aren't adequated funded, etc.) of political TNT.  

Read the story; frankly, if you think that a rational "but for" cost-benefit analysis is going to be an adequate response -- however much such an analysis might appeal to be -- you're blind.

What exactly would the Congress do other than preen for the cameras, express their sympathy for the victims, preen for the cameras, and then try to find someone to blame after preening for the cameras one last time?

All Congress can do in this instance is write relatively large checks.  Bush, Chertoff, and others already have the ability to use contingency funds, draw from other accounts, and make committments on behalf of the Federal Government for future payment for current services and goods.

Bringing Congress in a few days early won't do anything to speed up the check writing process.

Staff for the appropriators and relevant oversight committees are already talking with the Administration, with the effected (or is it affected?) States, and an emergency supplemental will pass through both chambers in a speed only beaten by 9/11.

The real world is not the 'West Wing'.  It takes time, effort, energy, and resources to make problems go away, not the deus ex machina of a doped up writer.  Food, water, shelter are on their way.

But let's not forget that this is an unprecedented natural disaster.  There is no way anyone could have planned for the cascade of effects that happened.

Highways are broken, roads under water, airports shut down.  There is no power.  It takes time to get through to the areas and it will take time to get it back in order.

That lawless individuals are willing to terrorize their fellow citizens is criminal and they should be arrested, beaten, and shot.  Not necessarily in that order.

But to blame Bush is just silly.

True, re: planning to a point.  However:

"Proactive Federal Response to Catastrophic Events

The National Response Plan provides mechanisms for expedited and proactive Federal support to ensure critical life-saving assistance and incident containment capabilities are in place to respond quickly and efficiently to catastrophic incidents. These are high-impact, low-probability incidents, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks that result in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions."

And we are witnessing it's debut moment.

I hold by my comments. What can I say. I just differ with your assessment. And I disagree that it will even be of interest in a couple of weeks. I could be wrong but I lived through Terry McAuliffe predicting in July 2001 that Bush would be impeached over ENRON.

The government is slow to react again.  The billion dollars a week we are spending in Iraq would look good in New Orleans.

It is the responsibility of local and state governments to advocate for their funding needs.  The budget is made as a compromise taking into account everyones needs.

Moreover, local governments shouldn't just sit around waiting for the feds to pay for fundamental infrastructure projects.  They should do it themselves.

to an absolute point.

State/Local emergency management agencies do the planning, direct the response and ask for resources.

That is exactly what you quote says.

But don't try to bootstrap your subject into this story. We are both finished on this subject.

So true. While it is nice to have the Federal Government assist in project, it is the State's responsibility to care for their citizens. NO knew about this problem for many years. For anyone to suddenly deem it the responsibility of Federal Government is misguided.

I've gone and made it formal.

...the notion that the entire levee system could have been fixed with two years of appropriations and could have withstood a Cat4 to Cat 5 storm by the time Katrina rolled through simply doesn't pass the laugh test.

There are some things that can be blamed on Bush. Decades of negligence and corruption on the part of local officialdom is not one of them. Sealing off New Orleans from Lake Ponchetrain  in order for the Crescent City to withstand a Cat 5 would have taken DECADES.

However, I fully expect the Running Dog press to make the old college try.

Unbelievable that disagreement with the author of a post subjects one to threats of banishment.  He's on topic and he's making a good point.  It just doesn't take him 1268 words.  

....judging by watching CNN, if the national guard is un-missing, then where are they?

If people believe these stories, and excuses, that will certainly have political effects. And to a certain extent we get to vote on our beliefs.

The facts, of course may vary, which makes for interesting election campaigns.

Since others have joined the free for all in disaster mongering, let's examine various other foreseeable disasters, say, California earthquakes, Seattle vulcanism, Chicago flooding, the whole state of Florida, and most of the coastal Carolinas.

Is the ACE responsible for any or all of these? Could you even build a lava levee or channel? Is it basically musical chairs for the unlucky sitting POTUS? Is there any individual responsibility involved? How about market forces - say uninsurability, assumption of risk, dare I say - redlining?

It seems the politcial fallout will be a choice between the infinite individual problems the government-centric will identify and assign blame for and seek power to do better next time, and the big picture disaster (no longer) waiting to happen crowd consisting of the more informal- and-freely organized and focused types who will deal with as best possible.

Money is fungible - how about the billions spent on Social Security, or highways, or aviation, or medicare, or the arts, or agriculture, or . . .

Or would the billions spent in Iraq have done a better job plugging the levee than any of the other billions?

Unbelievable that you can post that with a straight face.

He wasn't on topic, he was just exercising his sole talking point. Read the story.

Though I agree that this could be a political headache for the President, think about it. Are the American people going to support putting billions into shoring up a city, surrounded by water and below sea level, who's main reputation as a "party town" where women flash themselves for beads? I don't think America will fault him for not fully finding the levee project when the people of New Orleans themselves didn't act to (a) request more money from the government (especially after Ivan) or (b) raise the funds themselves through hotel or property taxes.

at the teleporters so they can be instantly, well, teleported to NO. Part of the delay is restoring power to the receiving teleporter. Scotty's giving everything he's got, but he needs more time!

Violate the posting rules, friend.

you are saying there are no Guardsmen in New Orleans when Governor Blanco mobilized them the night of Friday, August 26? And when AP reports 2,800 have been there since the hurricane hit? And when AP reports another 3,000 have arrived in the past two days?

Maybe you need to call CNN.

The Army Corps of Engineers constructed and maintained the levees.  By definition, it is a responsibility of the federal government because the federal government made it so.  

...the notion that the entire levee system could have been fixed with two years of appropriations and could have withstood a Cat4 to Cat 5 storm by the time Katrina rolled through simply doesn't pass the laugh test.

I think you overstate your case (two years would have had no effect whatsoever?), but, fundamentally, I agree with you.  As I wrote, this is a political problem caused by the appearance of mismanagement -- an appearance that President Bush did not do much to dispel by stating this morning (on ABC) that no-one anticipated that the levees would fail.  (Kevin Drum only mildly overstates the case by claiming that, in fact, everyone had anticipated that the levees might fail.  Indeed, as I recall, that's was the evacuation order was given pre-landfall.)  Bush needs to get in the game, and pronto; otherwise, Streiff's and Thomas's defenses will be little better than a rearguard action.  

Also, keep in mind that we're about/already experiencing a classic oil supply shock, with a strong possibility of a drag on the national economy.  If gas stays at or above $4/gallon for more than a month, and Bush fails to improve his disaster-management delivery, I predict that we'll see approval ratings in the low 30s/high 20s.

Finally, the folks downthread who are arguing that this is a state, not federal issue, are missing the point re: the Army Core of Engineers; also missing the point re: federalism; and are politically tone-deaf to boot.  Read J. Goldberg at the Corner for more (just scroll around).  In particular, read Goldberg's comment that Bush had better begin prepping, now, for the question of "would the response have been any different if the levees failed due to a terrorist strike?"  

but:

"I'm currently at Naval Station Ingleside, in South Texas. Over the weekend the amphibious assault ship, USS Bataan, was in route to our base for a port call. Instead, they were diverted to ride out Katrina in the gulf, standing by for possible relief efforts. Early Monday morning as Katrina was hitting, HM-15, a mine-countermeasures helicopter Squadron from Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, flew personnel and relief supplies out the Bataan and immediately started assisting in rescue operations. Currently there are 3 other large ships from the east coast en route to the Gulf area for relief operations. They may not be on television, but the Navy is actively involved."

ACE did have some (not "all") responsibility for the levees around NO; the risk was known and quantifiable; there's a narrative wherein the Bush administration was involved in cutting the budget for the NO levees; and there's a former Republican administrator who claims he was forced out of his job (in 2002) because he complained that the Bush administrations cuts could result in just such a tragedy.  Unless some element of that chain is proven to be incorrect, it's a big, big problem -- and completely different from your various hypotheticals.

Is the ACE responsible for any or all of these?

ACE has a unique responsibility for the levees in New Orleans because it built and maintained them.  California has been preparing for earthquakes for a long time on its own - federal responsibility should be limited to things like retrofitting bridges on federally funded highways.  The catastrophe in New Orleans was because of a break in an ACE levee.  Whether or not that responsibility should be given to the ACE is an open question, but it did when the levee broke.

here

This is my last post on the subject:  either you think that this story is -- at least in present form -- a big problem (as I do) or you don't.  There's no point in continuing to argue it's political effect; we'll all know in a month.

Perhaps there is an argument to be made that the full complement of Louisiana NG is/was not necessary, but yours is not convincing.

This leaves some 8,000 Guardsmen and an unknown number of Army Reservists available for disaster relief. The skill sets in those units, with the exception of the single combat engineer battalion, have no particular utility in disaster relief.

and

So did the equipment the 256th Infantry Brigade take with it to Iraq, equipment provide some unique immediate response capability that could have mitigated the damage from Katrina?

Specialized equipment and training are a not the issue here. There are municipal and military SAR teams in the area with such capabilities.

(1) One of the most important things in disaster relief is organization. NG is able to provide an organized force with good command and control, right there, on the spot.

(2) There are dozens of useful functions that can be performed by NG outside of specialized engineering or technical rescue tasks: (a) basic security (b) traffic control (c) distribution of water/food (d) limited evacuation (e) and, simply, ORGANIZED MANUAL LABOR.

(3) A good portion of NG would be quite familiar with the area, and would have local knowledge, making them that more effective than an out-of- state force.

(4) Faster response time than out-of-state units/organizations.

So, no, I don't buy the particulars of your argument.

agreed. There is a potential there that I think requires a unique alignment of stars to come to fruition. But we're both arguing our hypotheses at this point. I do have hot sauce in my desk drawer. It helps the flavor of crow and one of us may need it.

Unfortunately "the answers" have to do with being prepared, and that involves going back in time.  Having the troops arrive to keep law and order after lawlessness has already broken out looks bad.

Since we could see this coming a thousand miles away, we needed to be ready with a quicker deployment.  It's so obvious that I just assumed we'd be ready.  Who is in charge of the National Guard?

We know there was not enough law-enforcement manpower.  We know this because police were ignoring the looters to help the victims.  After a while, they stopped ignoring the looters, but this is at the expense of the victims.

National Guard troops can help keep the peace, they can help with disasters, they can help with logistics--they're not totally useless.  The Red Cross offers a two-day training course to anyone who will help, and I'm convinced the National Guard can also be so-trained.

You can write here about how Bush's actions are defensible, but that's not going to win these people over.  They need water to drink and couldn't care less about what you have to say.  The President can bring up 9/11 or Iraq or Terrorism or whatever, but what it's looking like now is that he can't cope with a hurricane.

So here's the PR situation: 1) The President was on vacation while the storm was ripping New Orleans to shreds.  2) There was a minimal law-enforcement presence right after the storm leading to looting and gunfights.  3) There are bodies in the street with no one in charge of cleanup.  4) There is a shortage of food and water and toilets.  5) Millions are now homeless.  6) We are spending hundreds of billions abroad.  7) We have hundreds of billions in budget deficits.  8) Damages are expected to be around $100 billion.

All of this adds up to Big Perception Trouble.  I think the President made a grave error here.  He should have cancelled his vacation days in advance and gone to work on the hurricane.  If it missed, well, it missed and at least he looked good being prepared.  If it hit, then he'd look even better for having a response plan in place and acting on it.

Dems complain loudly about The President's domestic policies being sub-par.  No one really bought it.  But now they have this example, see, and what the Dems are saying is going to start tp resonate as truth.  Again, this is a big perception problem for President Bush.

I don't really follow your reasoning over most of this:

The National Guard respond to the governor through the State Adjutant General. Today. The Guard has not been federalized.

Quite honestly your points 1-7 don't make much sense either. Whatever.

Sorry--I don't mean to be obscure.  Points 1-8 are presented as fact.  If they are in dispute, I apologize.

I'm not arguing right or wrong here--merely that people will add up these points and their conclusions will not cast Bush in a positive light.

I noted on my humble little blog that much to my surprise, Jamie McIntyre of CNN debunked this myth already, noting that 65% of the LA Guard was in the state and available to deploy (60% in MS, 74% in AL and 77% in FL). Many have noted what is posted here, that a Mech Brigade is of limited use in terms of equipment anyway. Given that the number of troops mobilized exceeds the entire strength of the LA Guard, the fact that troops are in Iraq (whose tour is ending in days)is not much of a hindrance. Additionally, they will be available whenn they return. Already Guard members from all over the region are deploying, especially Arkansas (tying up traffic in Memphis as they moved through town). Rather than join the chorus of people trying to assign blame, I would remind all that the reasons that make it hard to get people out of NOLA, make it hard to get into the city. Lack of available national guard troops is simply not an issue.  

Focus like a laser on ACE. What about the nutria, that storm that blew through, 200-300 years of history explained very well here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2125346/nav/tap2/

You can "blame" whoever you want, however you want, it's just no longer a disaster waiting to happen.

At the bottom of the article, yeah it's a long way to get there, is the following:

On the other hand, the unit left behind, the 225th Engineer Group, (Combat), and its four organic Engineer Battalions (Combat)(Heavy), is well suited for disaster relief. Army Field Manual 5-116 lays out their missions and capabilities

So, in fact, the LA NG group that can actually perform those critical organizational tasks are still in LA.

Aside from being able to shoot a lot of looters really quickly, what good would having an Infantry Batallion in New Orleans do you?

but most of your points 1-8 are state and local responsibility. So how you logically blame Bush is beyond me but I'm sure there will be those who do

accuse people of poor reading comprehension skills. I can see why.

The facts stand for themselves. FEMA cited the New Orleans levees as 1 of the top 3 major disasters (terrorist or otherwise) that could occur in the United States.

It is also a FACT that money for levee repair was not available due to the Bush Administration reallocating funds to the Iraq war.

Democrats have been saying for years that more money needed to spend domestically on infrastructure to protect interests.

Now, when we are faced with this disaster, you see a  President finally come back from vacation playing guitar and making stump speeches about Medicare to tell us to "stay the course" on a Louisiana cleanup 3 days after it occurred.

When are Bush fans finally going to admit that the president has made MAJOR errors focusing his entire presidency on Iraq, tax cuts, and Social Security reform at the expense of making America better able to respond to these kinds of disasters?

If Bush had TRULY learned lessons from 9/11, he would've understood that his priorities should have been more focused on making America safer at home. He has shown that he refuses to admit to mistakes, much less learn from them.

Don't insult our intelligence by defending the Bush Administration on this one. They dropped the ball here.

reading to be useful before arguing.

1-- 8,000 Louisiana National Guard were called up last Friday.

2-- read above

3-- Not true. Only one of the battalions of the 256th is based in either Orleans or Jefferson Parishes.

4-- See 1 and 2 above.

Obviously you don't buy the particulars if you don't understand the argument itself.

CNN is on my side. I've finally won.

I concur fully that New Orleans would eventually face this disaster.  The city simply can not sink forever and expect to never be inundated - its geography was unsustainable.  That said, however, the levees were there specifically to prevent this disaster.  In order to prevent disaster, you need to take into account nutrias and storms which are likely to occur.  There's no point in maintaining levees if you don't accept the threats to them.  Since Katrina weakened and missed to the east, it was maybe a 40-year storm, not the biblical Category 5 direct hit that nobody can reasonably prepare for.

and maintain "underwater" cities for what reason?  There needs to be some sanity in the types of risk-taking to be subsidized by the feds.

you don't really want to post here.

You post an off-topic diatribe and it is supposed to pass for commentary.

Better look somewhere else.

interested in discussing this in good faith. Have a nice day.

To flush the taste of crow out of my mouth.  And I've got a lot handy, just in case.

I've eaten crow (literally) and I've had Diet Mountain Dew, and I'd rather cooked bird.

Show up, don't read the story, don't know jack on the subject, make stuff up and we're acting in bad faith.

Bye.

I'm a Diet Mountain Dew fiend.  My wife can't understand it either (then again, she makes a face when she has "diet" anything).

I barely know where to start.

First, if anyone thinks the bulk of the media reporting on this disaster would like nothing more than to foment a groundswell of sentiment to undermine this President, then they surely must not understand the agenda. Yes, there are outlets out there who are and will report the good that is going on. But in whole, you are going to get that from the usual sources we in the conservative wing find that news: blogs, talk radio and our trusted online news sources.

Second,I'd imagine many of the people who are critical of the planning, preplanning and response are the same people who can't pack for a long weekend without forgetting half the stuff they need. They are the same people who show up at a camping trip with no toilet paper, but they have two cases of beer. I'm simplifying this of course, but I think you get my point.

Third, they also forget that a hurricane and it's path is not predicatble. What if people and materials were prestaged in some area, and then that area fell into the path of the hurricane. It's just impossible to know with certainty where to be with all the absolute proper materials and services.

It's called triage. You do what you can beforehand, then respond to what you see that you can do. It would have been a crying shame if there had been a million bottles of water sitting on the  LA border and the hurricane came along and wiped it out.

The scale of this disaster, if it had only hit New Orleans, would have been monumental. The wide area that it devesated did nothing but complicate the issue.

There's a bunch of other things I would like to say. But I'm not - except this: it doesn't matter what the President did or didn't do. There are elements of folks who are going to do all they can to pick at any scab and hope it hemorrhages.

...we needed to be ready with a quicker deployment... So the Governor fires up a few thousand Guardsmen and sends them to New Orleans so they can get trapped by the same situation they are supposed to deal with?

...We know there was not enough law-enforcement manpower. ... The number of police officers in the New Orleans Police Department is the responsibility of the people of the City of New Orleans, not the Governor, not the State Legislature, not the President, the people of New Orleans.

...The Red Cross offers a two-day training course to anyone who will help, and I'm convinced the National Guard can also be so-trained... This is too stupid to deserve a response.

...but what it's looking like now is that he can't cope with a hurricane... Show me the part in the Constitution where the President is supposed to deal with hurricanes. What would you have him do, put on hip boots and go deliver water to the folks on Bourbon Street?

...So here's the PR situation: 1) The President was on vacation while the storm was ripping New Orleans to shreds.  2) There was a minimal law-enforcement presence right after the storm leading to looting and gunfights.  3) There are bodies in the street with no one in charge of cleanup.  4) There is a shortage of food and water and toilets.  5) Millions are now homeless.  6) We are spending hundreds of billions abroad.  7) We have hundreds of billions in budget deficits.  8) Damages are expected to be around $100 billion.... So where to begin?

1. The President was not on vacation mo matter how many times you or the press says that. He was not in Washington but that doesn't mean he is not in communication or out of contract. If there is a 24x7 job in this world President is it. At Crawford he is no more away from work or isolated that if he was at a summit meeting in Scotland.
   
   
2. See my previous answer about the New Orleans Police Department staffing. Talk to the Mayor.
   
   
3. I am reasonably confident that the President knows little if anything about pathology or mortuary processes. There are people who do and they are on site and more on the way. The first priority is saving those who can be saved; the dead are not coming back even if Kerry had been elected.
   
   
4. Yep. There is a shortage of all of those things. Having survived Andrew I can tell you that we had the same shortages and it was a damn sight longer than 48 hours before federal aid arrived --- this is not a perfect world with instantaneous hurricane relief, even under "President" Kerry.
   
   
5. Yep, there are now millions homeless. And the problem has to be dealt with. Bitching about it does not fix anything. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes happen and people have to address the results.
   
   
6. And the point is?
   
   
7. So what. Are you under the impression that we won't make available whatever funds are necessary to help the Gulf coast just because it might add a few bucks to the deficit?
   
   
8. Quite possibly, but so what? There are in your own words millions homeless in need of food, water, shelter and assistance.

...He should have canceled his vacation days in advance and gone to work on the hurricane...

So let me get this straight. Every time there is a hurricane near shore, or a potential flood or some other possible natural disaster the President should drop everything and rush back to DC so he can keep his finger on the pulse from there instead of using all the massive communications resources that the American taxpayer provides so he can keep his finder on the pulse from wherever he happens to be in, or on Air Force One above, the world.

It is a perception problem if you are an idiot or a Democrat, but that's redundant.

You have the levees to hold back a certain category threat. If you build them higher, you prevent greater threats. If you want to go after the levee builders, go for it.

I can't believe we're discussing nutria here.

are my only notable culinary adventures.

Whether or not USACE should be maintaining levees in the future is open for debate.  Whether or not it was their responsibility at the time of the breach is not in dispute.  Whether or not it was sane to do so is only relevant to deciding future policy at this point.

No offense, but you're arguing with children.  Nothing will ever be good enough for these people.  If Bush had personally carried a baby out of the flood they would say he was doing it for a photo-op or should have been managing things from a higher level instead of micromanaging it.  If he had managed everything from the WH or Crawford, they would have complained he wasn't there personally overseeing every minute detail.  They hate Bush and that is what it is about.  Not about America, not about New Orleans, not about people suffering because of the hurricane.  It is always about Bush.  Everything is.  Everything is seen through a veil of Bush hate and a tragedy like this won't change that.

And after all the complaining, they offer nothing.  No solutions.  If they were so clairvoyant to know that the levees would break, why weren't they pushing for more funding 5 years ago when it might have done some good?  Why weren't the Dems in congress urging people to evacuate.  Why weren't they offering up their planes to fly people out.  Why weren't they doing a million things that might have helped?  Because they would rather complain than do anything.  It is easier than actually coming up with a plan and implementing it.  Never mind who should have done it.  If they want to complain about it today, they should have offered up something last week.  Instead they didn't.  They waited, prepared their notes and let loose as soon as something went wrong.  

Were mistakes made?  Of course.  I work in logistics and we have a hard enough time delivering pastries on time and not spilling milk.  Evacuating millions...?  Probably a little more difficult.  But that doesn't matter to these children because Bush should have teleported them out.  

What we need to remember is how they are acting now when we are out of power.  Because we need to know that this is not what we should do.  When a Dem President does something good, we should applaud it. When he does something bad, we should point it out and offer a viable solution.  Calmly, clearly and effectively.  Otherwise we'll look like the children on dKos who spend their lives hating someone.

At Crawford he is no more away from work or isolated that if he was at a summit meeting in Scotland.

Then why was it necessary to go to Washington and sign Terry Schiavo legislation?

... you ought to address your question to the Mayor of New Orleans. He said himself this is the storm they had feared for decades. Well, the storm arrived and they apparently had no, or at least an inadequate, plan to deal with it.

They have know for decades that large parts of the population was too poor to evacuate themselves. They have know for decades that the levee system was designed up to Category 3. They have known for decades that they had barely sufficient pumping capacity to keep ahead of seepage and heavy rains. They have known for decades that they were a mean 6 feet below sea level yet not one public or private building had rafts or boats on site.

At the end of the day New Orleans is a d*mn boat; a hole in the water surrounded by levees and concrete walls. The Coast Guard requires a boat operator to have a floatation device for every person on a boat but there were no lifeboats provided for the citizens of New Orleans.

Is it too much to expect for the government of New Orleans to take some small responsibility for this mess?

I didn't blame Bush.  I just said there's a growing perception that he's to blame.  You said so yourself with your opening statement.

Logic doesn't enter into the equation for people who are dying of thirst, and it barely enters into it for people who are watching people die of thirst in their home country.

What does Bush's vacation logically have to do with the hurricane?  Nothing.  But it sure doesn't look good.  If he hadn't cancelled it, it would have been a PR nightmare.

So...points 2-7 are state and local responsibility.  So, what, there shouldn't be a federal response to those points?  How would that look to the people?  Of course it would look awful, and, indeed, there is a federal response.  It looks like 3000 Army troops might be sent in at this point, and 4200 MPs.  The Navy is coming.  Why the federal response to the purely state issue?

People need to feel like The President has their backs.  And right now the President needs to look that way, regardless of whose responsibility it is.  He looked that way after 9/11.  This isn't the same as 9/11, but it is a national disaster, and he needs to look in charge and Presidential.

Here.  It's very difficult to "pre-plan" for a disaster of the kind that has befallen New Orleans.  Even assuming that the "study" that's the subject of so much lefty intrigue right now was conducted, there is no evidence that anything found by that study would have happened in time to influence the situation in New Orleans today.  The people in New Orleans are surrounded by water because they have deliberately chosen to live below sea level.  Blumenthal says things like this, but they don't make much sense:

But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

Here we see the evil hand of George Bush, condemning New Orleans to destruction and siphoning money away from the Corps of Engineers to fund his war.  But nothing is said of the people in Louisiana themselves -- their mayor, their senior senator, and their governor -- all Democrats, all powerless before the impending catastrophe, apparently.  OK.  Believe this kind of garbage if you must.

You know, what it seems to me more than anything else is the proximate cause of this diasaster is the accumulation of human laziness and desire to believe that "it can't happen here."  We've known for decades that New Orleans was in danger if it was ever hit with a CAT5 hurricane.  In 1969, we saw one -- Camille.  And yet, nothing has shaken the city to its roots as this one has, and nothing has so rallied the Left to impeach the President personally.  How many times does the swamp have to flood before the people who want to live in the swamp change what they're doing?  Does anyone on the left really expect us to believe that New Orleans the victim of some deliberate malfeasance on the part of the Administration to cause this catastrophe?

Isn't it the Congress that controls the purse strings for the budget, ultimately?  Shouldn't the people in Louisiana have been asked to pay to maintain their own levee system?  What about the people in the city itself?

Now the personal anecdote:

I lived in a luxury high-rise apartment building in my current city (Chicago) for quite a while.  I was a leftist then, surrounded by people who were solidly Democrat.  The building was built in the early 1960s and was the tallest all-rental apartment building in the world for a long, long time.  The air-conditioning and heating system was based on low-pressure water circulation, requiring huge pumps in the basement to circulate the fluid in both the winter and summer to either warm or cool the building.  They knew it was a very weak link because the essential systems were decades old and, because the building hadn't been modernized, were obsolete.

One day, disaster struck:  the central air-conditioning system for the entire building failed.  The recovery from that took almost ten days, as they sourced a huge chiller that was a spare unit from what used to be the World Trade Center buildings in Manhattan, flew it out to Chicago on a 747 and had it trucked to the site.  Of course, it couldn't be moved into the building:  the structure was literally built around the air-conditioning and heating systems.  Instead, they had to build a temporary shelter for this enormous heat pump on the OUTSIDE of the building, and brought in teams of pipefitters and electricians who worked around the clock for days to hook everything and restore air-conditioning to the building in the summer heat.

This wasn't an inexpensive place to live.  The management company wasn't poor, and the manager was a competent man (who almost had a heart attack during this disaster as more than 900 units, some of which were occupied by elderly people, sweltered.)  

It wasn't really anyone's fault, directly.  They had put off the inevitable for too long.  As long as the systems were working, they imagined that they would keep on working, and hadn't planned to replace them -- at least until the hand of fate forced them to.  They had of course planned to modernize the building in the future, but it wasn't on anyone's agenda that week when the A/C failed.  It was a catastrophe and an enormous effort to fix things up.  Luckily nobody died.  

From everything I've read so far, what has happened in New Orleans sounds like this situation.

Of course, Cynthia Bogard, professor of Sociology at Hofstra University, has a different view.  She sees what happened in New Orleans as the result of the systematic looting of our "modest welfare state."  [Hint to our readers:  She's further left than Clinton and blames him, too.]  

Now that Katrina's come to town, it's become all too apparent how far down the road to the wholesale giveaway of America's collective wealth to its wealthy we have traveled. And the consequences of purposely destroying our modest welfare state have become devastatingly clear--well, at least to some.

Even professors at Hofstra have been made aware of the talking points.  The level of coordination is pretty remarkable.

for this is "non-sequitur." Or did the president sign legislation in Crawford? Or what?

I lived in Texas and killed too many armadillos.

Let's say camping in the woods in several days of rain with no food can produce interesting effects on one's appetite.

... that we built a levee system around New Orleans designed to protect against a Categoy 5 storm. What do you say to the people of Gulfport or Biloxi or Mobile or Galveston or ...

We can build a wall to protect New Orleans but we can't build one to protect Miami or Corpus Cristi or whereever? The levee system is high enough to keep the water out of New Orleans under most conditions. But after that why is New Orleans more worth protecting than Savannah or Pensacola?

..Next Question.

... there is a signed contract somewhere that says that the city shall not flood, no matter what, and someone besides the city, the county, or the state is liable if it does?  That would interest me.

How difficult an operation of the sort you are talking about is? We are talking about a major hurricane, followed by two solid days of rising flood waters, which has just now subsided.  And you somehow think we should have everything under control?  And that failure to do so represents a failure at the Presidential level? What kind of naive Pollyanna are you? For cryin' out loud, it takes longer than that to recover from a major snowstorm!

This is easiy the greatest natural disaster visited upon this country since the SF earthquake. It happened to be primarily visited upon the worst-governed city and state in the nation. To blame anything onthe President at this stage is cheap hack partisanship.

I find this entire line of argument highly objectionable. It is borderine sick.

all this guy and a couple others are interested in are taking some cheap shots from talking points they've picked up somewhere and don't completely understand.

I had to bring up the nutria. If those people over there, you know - them - http://www.dailykos.com/ can blame W for everything, I feel it appropriate to blame the lowly nutria. What's a rodent for, if not that?

The real problem is not the National Guard or any other one government agency.

I run a series of high level consulting teams; when you have a big and complicated problem we can help. We provide the program management and logistics you provide the labor. Why? Because most senior executives in most major American corporations have very specific skill set; politics and organizational navigation, they don't actually know how to get work done.

The government is even worse, we won't touch government projects. The politics and organizational nonsense is overwhelming. The people in government only know how to run for office or curry favors with their superiors, they have no clue of how to actually manage a real-time complicated project.

The results you are seeing in Louisiana are not unexpected. You have two choices in the long run, one, demand that government has a non-political execution arm for terrorist or natural disaster clean-up, or two, have contracts with people who actually know how to manage large complex problem projects.

Paul

Hm. I like that phrase ... so true.