I'm starting to feel that i can no longer be silent, though. Although the hurricane itself is no one's fault, some of the responsibility for the enormity of this disaster must fall upon:
- Those who cut the funding that was desperately needed for repairing the levees protecting New Orleans.
- Those who dismantled FEMA and replaced it with a Homeland Security department unprepared to handle major disasters.
- Those who stretched the National Guard to its breaking point overseas.
- Those who have misled and continue to mislead us about the real problems taking place.
At 4:01 in this video of President Bush's interview with Diane Sawyer:
Bush: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."False. Absurd. They've been talking about it for years.
New Orleans mayor Roy Nagin expressed his frustration in a radio interview on Friday.
Nagin: "I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count. Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."
The situation at the Convention Center is horrific, and getting worse. And yet Michael Brown, head of FEMA, remained clueless about the problem until the fourth day after the hurricane.
Zahn: "Sir, you aren't just telling me you just learned that the folks at the Convention Center didn't have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?"Michael Moore's open letter to Bush does a decent job of expressing some of what i feel right now.
Brown: "Paula, the federal government did not even know about the Convention Center people until today [September 1]." (full transcript)
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A certain Reverend Bill Shanks believes that God brought the hurricane to purge New Orleans of sin. "New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free," he says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff." But the same article notes that "Shanks heeded warnings to evacuate New Orleans, and is currently staying with friends in the Jackson, Mississippi, area."Okay, here's what i want to know: If he has so much faith in the mercy of God, why didn't he stay in New Orleans?
