PATHETIC PREPARATION AND RESPONSE

[quiet.american]

http://www.collegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/07/431e7f108273e

Excerpt:

So who is to blame for the response, or lack thereof? Many people are quick to point fingers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and this argument deserves some attention. However, there is a reason FEMA is far more inept today than it was in the 90s, and that reason is President Bush.

According to Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant, President Bush's decision to make FEMA a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was a "major mistake." Instead of being its own independent agency, FEMA is now a small part of the DHS, which loses loads of money to terrorist related security issues. As a result, our country severely lacks the means to handle disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. In fact, former FEMA director James Lee Witt, who served under President Clinton from 1993 to 2001, warned Congress in 2004, "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded." (Reuters).

President Bush's decision to make FEMA a small, insignificant subsidiary of the DHS has proven to be a mistake of catastrophic proportions (no pun intended). Getting rid of James Lee Witt in 2001, a man President Bush himself praised in the first presidential debate in 2000, has also turned out to be a mistake. Ignoring Witt's comments to Congress was yet another mistake. Then, when we saw Hurricane Katrina barreling through the Gulf as a category five hurricane with winds up to 160 mph, what did President Bush do to help prepare for the upcoming disaster? The same thing he did for four days after Katrina hit and chaos broke out: Nothing. Another mistake.

Massachusetts Governor Republican Mitt Romney called the government's response to Katrina, "an embarrassment." I could not agree more. The fact that we are allowing people to be raped in broad daylight in the streets is not only embarrassing but also repulsive. Dead bodies laying in and floating down the water filled streets and starvation forcing people to literally kill for food does not sound like America. But for the past week, this has been life in Louisiana.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Bushie gonna try and spin this one but shit does not fly well.

[quiet.american]

2. Truthfully, I'm not so sure.

It was refreshing to find this piece, because it already seems to me the MSM is capitulating and returning to business as usual. Maybe I'm wrong.