Katrina

[qos]

The aftermath of Katrina finally started to sink in with me last night. I am sad and angry and frightened about what's going on in New Orleans and Biloxi. I'm furious about the completely incompetent response by those in power to what's going on. And I have been scaring myself by imagining "What if?" something like this happened in my city. I'm certainly not ready to weather that kind of disaster.

I read in the news yesterday that Bush was "urging patience" with response efforts. PATIENCE? People have been without food or water for more than four days now. There are thousands of dead bodies lying in the street and drifting on the water, and our president urges fucking patience?

And isn't that his perpetual counsel to us about the war in Iraq as well?

Why isn't Bush leading the charge to get humanitarian aid into this Ground Zero? Under protection of the military if necessary -- but why isn't he making things happen? He showed far more energy and enthusiasm about flexing our military muscle halfway around the world than he is saving our own citizens.

ETA: Just saw this from this morning: For the first time, however, [Bush] stopped defending his administration's response and criticized it. "A lot of people are working hard to help those who've been affected. The results are not acceptable," he said. "I'm heading down there right now."

I'm not sure his presence is going to make that much difference, but "not acceptable" is a step in the right direction. Let's hope that he actually puts some real energy behind making a real difference for the people who are suffering there.

Comments

[femalegamer.livejournal.com]

From what I understand the situation is worsened due to the amount of National Guard people who are in Iraq instead of there to help. :/

[rachel-y.livejournal.com]

I'm angry and appalled.

And I find it a mordantly amusing juxtaposition that our idiot prince called an emergency session of congress, on a Sunday night to push through a bill to extend the life of a woman in a permanent vegetative state, but it took him more than Two Fucking Days* to even give this any attention.

I've read recaps of a tv interview with the FEMA director wherein he implies reports of how bad it is are exagerrated, that "it can't really be that bad." This is the FEMA director!! The reporter was apparently so agog at his response he asked him to repeat it.

*Two days in which he attended to such important state business as pitching a medicare prescription plan and attended a birthday celebration for Sen. John McCain.

[amqu.livejournal.com]

All of the infrastructure is gone in New Orleans. There is no way to get any heavy trucks into the city. All the interstates are damaged and impassable and the trucks cannot get over the very flood-weakened bridges on the surface roads.

Many thousands have already been rescued. Rampant and evil looting (of the nonsurvival kind) is hindering emergency personnel.

Things could be done better, but this is a natural disaster nearly unprecedented in American history.

And FYI for the commenter above, there are plenty of National Guard in the States. There is no shortage of NG troops. Iraq is not an issue on that score.