Subj : Re: It seems not everyone shares the "Blame Bush All The Way" viewpoint...
To   : alt.tv.farscape
From : Nick
Date : Tue Sep 06 2005 16:43:00

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape

Ken McElhaney wrote:

> Over the weekend, ABC/Washington Post poll reveals that despite the
> massive criticism aired 24/7 on Bush, most Americans just don't see it
> that way;
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/8lbd5

I am surprised that many Republicans approved of the handling.

> And while the federal response was way too slow and disasters of this
> size should NOT be handled by FEMA, but rather the US military (which
> has no buerocracy to get in the way), I do have some questions for the
> local 'n state authorities, namely;

I disagree.  I think FEMA is the proper place to handle this sort of thing 
but it needs more of a military type heirarchy in which quick decisions 
can be made on the spot without a long approval process.  Of course, any 
decisions made will not look as good a few days later but that will happen 
anyway.

> Why did the Mayor of New Orleans wait until SUNDAY to order the
> manditory evacuation of his city? 24 hours after both the govenor AND
> Bush pleaded with him to do so?

My first guess is because he can't for certain predict the path a 
hurricane will take.  My next guess would be because of the cost.  If he 
had called for a massive mandatory evacuation of New Orleans and bussed 
thousands of people out of there and the hurricane had turned east and 
totally missed New Orleans there would be no federal money.  He would have 
blown a huge part of his yearly budget on something that, in hindsight, 
was unnecessary and he would get complete blame for it.
It's really easy to say what should have been done.

> Why didn't the Superdome & Convention Center have ANY water 'n food
> supplies IF they were suppose to be shelters?

People were told to bring their own food.  It really wasn't expected to be 
as bad as it was and if the 17th street canal hadn't been knocked out it 
wouldn't have been as bad.  It still would have been bad, just not AS bad.

> And if they weren't capable of handling that number of people, then why
> didn't they use the school 'n tourist buses (there were over 500 that
> survived the hurricane) to start getting them out BEFORE the flood
> waters cut off the city? 

That, I don't know.

> In fact, why didn't they start moving people out on Saturday?

Move them to where?

> When word of the water barriers breaking reached the gov's office on
> Monday, why didn't she send in the National Guard (over 5,000 soldiers
> who had already been activated) into New Orleans right away before the
> flood waters cut off the city?

Send in 5000 more people with no supplies?  I dunno if that is such a good 
idea.  BTW, National Guard units do not have live ammuntion on hand.  It 
would be far too dangerous to have a lot of automatic weapons and 
ammunition sitting in the middle of cities with people only being around 
one weekend a month.

> I think that after all this is over and the investigations are
> concluded, we'll have a new FEMA director, a new federal system for
> handling disaters of this massive size (which is larger than ANY in US
> history), and hopefully New Orleans will have a new Mayor and perhaps
> an actual plan to deal with a situation everyone knew could happen over
> the past 40 years.

Well, yeah, NOW we know it is the largest disaster.  
Did we know that 10 days ago?
By the way, there are always people who won't leave.
What do you do about them, shoot them?

.