Ah, Politics!

[Victor]

Funny thing about this - everyone who hates Bush is using Katrina as an excuse to bash him. But unlike 911, one can legitimately ask whether Gore or Clinton would have done any better.

[LeeG]

but would Gore or Clinton have an overstretched National Guard with $500million out the door to Iraq every day as a foundation from which to judge their actions in a Katrina like disaster ?
The bashing isn't in isolation, FEMA was supposed to deal with national emergencies and it was an organization to post marginally qualified GOP supporters. That's not protecting the "Homeland".

http://www.washingtonpost.c om/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802165_pf.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802165_pf.html)

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.

Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

then there's this 1984 bs that made "slam dunk" bad intel possible, White House aide talking to Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

[ 09-09-2005, 09:26 PM: Message edited by: LeeG ]

[Del Lansing]

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters OK, name one person that has experience with the flash flooding of a city???

[LeeG]

yeah,,and I bet Coast Guard Vice Admiral Allen has no experience managing rules for Arabian horse competition,,,my god the responsibilities!

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by Del Lansing:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters OK, name one person that has experience with the flash flooding of a city???</font>[/QUOTE]How about people with experience of disaster relief, no matter what the cause? People in need are people in need.

[RichKrough]

Originally posted by Del Lansing:
OK, name one person that has experience with the flash flooding of a city???[/QB]James Dewitt FEMA director under Clinton... Remember the floods of 1993? The Misssissippi river was out of it's banks for 4 months. Dewitt was a Clinton appointee, maybe even got it throught patronage, but he was experinced in emergency management

I supported this president through the first few days of this disaster, but there is mounting evidence that the administration played politics to the detriment of those people in NO.

[brad9798]

Yea, well, that flood was 90% farmland ... hardly any serious evacuation ... more of a commuting headache.

I know! I lived through it.

NO comparison whatsoever ... at least not for folks that have firsthand experience.

[LeeG]

Brad,Del,,,are you watching the TV program right now about the response to Katrina?

[George Roberts]

Victor ---

I don't think Clinton or Gore would have done better than Bush.

The problem is none of them actually "ran" a business.

They don't have friends to appoint to office who can get jobs done. They also don't have friends in business who would take risks after the hurricane. (I guess both political parties currently want the other party to look bad regardless. That may be part of it.)

I disagreed with the Iraq war, but it was well fought. Forcing democracy on the winners/losers has not gone so well.

All in all the terrorists are still winning.

[LeeG]

Originally posted by Del Lansing:
OK, name one person that has experience with the flash flooding of a city???[/QUOTE]


Remember 9/11 was supposed to change everything,,it's a war on Terror,,the Iraqis/Al Qaeda/Taliban were going to swim up the Potomac and set off a nuke. FEMA was folded into Homeland security. And you'd prefer an expert in Arabian Horse standards?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/09/katrin a/main832548.shtml (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/09/katrina/main832548.shtml)

On Sept. 11, 2001, Allen was commander of all Coast Guard operations east of the Rocky Mountains. In the days after the terrorist attacks, he was responsible for making sure local responders in the New York area had the vessels, aircraft and personnel they needed.

Four months later, Allen was asked about the Coast Guard's all-hands-on-deck response to the hijackings as part of an oral history project.

"When we decide we're going to do something, we'll do it," he said.

Allen, 56, is also credited with leading the Coast Guard's smooth transition from the Transportation Department to the Homeland Security Department in 2003.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and chairman of the committee that oversees Homeland Security, said it became clear to her on Thursday that the Coast Guard was the most organized and best prepared entity to deal with the initial response.

"Vice Admiral Thad Allen is a strong choice," Collins said in a statement. "He is a highly respected leader who should be very effective in improving the coordination of assistance for the hundreds of thousands of individuals and their families who were affected by the hurricane."

Allen, the Coast Guard's chief of staff since 2002, has spent his entire career in the Coast Guard since graduating from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1971.

A graduate of MIT's Sloan School of Management, Allen is described as sharp and incisive, an avid reader who provides clear direction.

"We don't know when he sleeps," said Coast Guard spokeswoman Jolie Shifflet.

[ 09-09-2005, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: LeeG ]

[Al Kahawl]

Originally posted by Del Lansing:
OK, name one person that has experience with the flash flooding of a city???Try Dutch guys back about 1953

[Meerkat]

<span style="font-size: 3em;">Listen UP!

This is not about the kind of disaster it is, it's about the PEOPLE!!!!!!!!

The houses, roads and other infrastructure can be replaced - it's only money.

You can't replace people! Can you replace the singers, musicians, other entertainers and who knows how many other people that have enriched the nation's life? I don't think so!

We need officials who know how to care for PEOPLE in the aftermath of a disaster. Those are common needs, regardless of what kind of disaster: food, clothing, shelter, medicenes and knowing someone cares about them after they have lost EVERYTHING! These needs are not based on the kind of disaster it is or what fool said what on TV.

In my own personal disaster, the federal government has been grindingly slow and seemingly stingy to a fault, but they ARE coming through. Without the people of Washington state and the United States, if I wasn't already dead I soon would be - weeks or months, not the few years I have left.

Thank you ALL Americans for creating a nation and a government that can help. It's fallen down some under our (OUR!) current leadership, but, hopefully, this too shall pass and we will be stronger and more knowledgable for it.

IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!! :mad:

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Class structure demonstrated at it's worst. The people left in the path of Katrina were poor, black, and ignored. :(

[joejapan]

PMJ, why don't you go out and start a grasssroots campaign to bring all those people up to Ontario and take care of them ?

I'm sure they'd really appreciate the help, you'd probably feel great doing something good for someone, and Ontario would be proud of you.

A win win situation if I've ever seen it !

[joejapan]

.

[ 09-10-2005, 12:24 AM: Message edited by: joejapan ]

[LeeG]

were not ignored,,in 72hrs Chertoff found out about the mess at the arena from CNN and Fox.