I requested that this thread be removed

though i will not argue with bush haters..
i have to pose the question..

With THOUSANDS of people in need, why is ONE person responsible?
What can he physically do at this point aside from relief efforts, funding etc that is -
1) going to make the area SAFE enough for rescue workers to GET TO people

2) make the fearful calm enough to COOPERATE with workers

3) bring these people back to life?


I wont argue much. i hate bush. Everyone knows that.. but slightly in his defense..even if he were to board a small boat and start helping people directly, he would never be able to help everyone.
No matter how many rescue workers there are, there is still THOUSANDS of gallons of rain water in their way. If they dont stop people from stealing all their food reserves, what will they have to give anyone else?

frustrating situation.. but i believe that the people who are offering to help are doing what needs to be done and to the best of their abilities. Of course, I can not prove that...

would their financial status make a diffrence?
Absolutly.
They would live in an area where funding for rescue efforts would be ALOT more, there would be more hired help available.
But would it make a diffrence with 10,000 gallons of water in the way?
I doubt it..

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

Bitch, complain, moan and hollar all you want. It won't get those who are dead back to us and it won't get much needed food and water to those who managed to stay alive. So what if Bush is responsible? Responsible or not, right this moment, it isn't going to make one lick of difference.

However, in the defense of those who have expressed their displeasure, I can understand the frustration and the need to blame someone. This is an absolute tragedy and literally incomprehensible. Especially in a country as rich as ours. Why are there people dying? We need answers and those answers aren't there. We need a resolution that is coming too slowly. I can understand the frustration.

I don't think so. Regardless of who they are so many are unreachable. The city is drowning. The buildings are gone. If you had a million dollars, no one would know because you are covered in the same river sludge as the guy down the street who had nothing. Everyone has been made equal by Katrina.

that is what i was saying..
it would in certain aspects..
but fighting that much water. not at all. Money is worth nothing then

There is no excuse that food, water and medical supplies haven't been brought in and they are just talking about bringing in the national guard now.
There are so many things that could have been done in advance, but nothing was.

I guess Bushy was too busy on vacation to worry about the little people!

You are right. But looking back won't bring the people what they need. That's all I'm saying.

I wish I could afford to take leave of my job and go help. I would. But I can't.

again.. im not defending. but
it just STOPPED raining. ?

a relief team cant be effective if it is still flooding. They themselves would die/drown . With the limited amount of rescue workers there are, you cant afford to send them into a storm that hasnt stopped.
On top of that.. everything is flooded. Where are they going to bring the food too? They cant explore for a place, ....it is still flooding..
I couldnt imagine being a rescue worker in this type of a situation.
Those exact statements you made would be eating me alive because i would think, even faced with millions of gallons of water, that i could still do something..
but truthfully.. there are times where you cant do anything immediatly.





cant argue that... ;-)

Synonymph
Excellent post! Thank you!

The states all have received enormous amounts of money to implement a course of action should any further attacks or disasters occur. Don't tell me Louisiana got squat. They got their fair share of the money. You may not be able to point your finger at any one person and lay all of the blame on him/her but you sure as hell can lay it at the feet of this administration. All we have been told is how much better off we would be after the creation of the DoHS. Are we better off? Would it be any different now without Michael Chertow and his department? I think not. This isn't a bit amusing. All we need now is to get hit by some over confident terrorist and we are done for. Our resources are stretched to the limit as it is.

Doctors at Two New Orleans Hospitals Plead for Rescue, Saying They Are Nearly Out of Food, Power

09-01-2005 3:29 PM
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer

Doctors at two desperately crippled hospitals in New Orleans called The Associated Press Thursday morning pleading for rescue, saying they were nearly out of food and power and had been forced to move patients to higher floors to escape looters.

"We have been trying to call the mayor's office, we have been trying to call the governor's office ... we have tried to use any inside pressure we can. We are turning to you. Please help us," said Dr. Norman McSwain, chief of trauma surgery at Charity Hospital, the largest of two public hospitals.

Charity is across the street from Tulane University Medical Center, a private facility that has almost completed evacuating more than 1,000 patients and family members, he said.

No such public resources are available for Charity, which has about 250 patients, or University Hospital several blocks away, which has about 110 patients.

"We need coordinated help from the government," McSwain said.

He described horrific conditions.

"There is no food in Charity Hospital. They're eating fruit bowl punch and that's all they've got to eat. There's minimal water," McSwain said.

"Most of their power is out. Much of the hospital is dark. The ICU (intensive care unit) is on the 12th floor, so the physicians and nurses are having to walk up floors to see the patients."

Dr. Lee Hamm, chairman of medicine at Tulane University, said he took a canoe from there to the two public hospitals, where he also works, to check conditions.

"The physicians and nurses are doing an incredible job, but there are patients laying on stretchers on the floor, the halls were dark, the stairwells are dark. Of course, there's no elevators. There's no communication with the outside world," he said.

"We're afraid that somehow these two hospitals have been left off ... that somehow somebody has either forgotten it or ignored it or something, because there is no evidence anything is being done."

Hamm said there was relief Wednesday as word traveled throughout University Hospital that the National Guard was coming to evacuate them, but the rescue never materialized.

"You can imagine how demoralizing that was," he said.

Throughout the entire city, the death, destruction and depravity deepened even as the hurricane waters leveled off.

"Hospitals are trying to evacuate," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center. "At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them. There are people just taking pot shots at police and at helicopters, telling them, 'You better come get my family.'"

Richard Zuschlag, president of Acadian Ambulance Service Inc., described the chaos at a suburban hospital.

"We tried to airlift supplies into Kenner Memorial Hospital late last evening and were confronted by an unruly crowd with guns, and the pilots refused to land," he said.

"My medics were crying, screaming for help. When we tried to land at Kenner, my pilots got scared because 100 people were on the helipad and some of them had guns. He was frightened and would not land."

Zuschlag said 65 patients brought to the roof of another city hospital, Touro Infirmary, for evacuation Wednesday night spent the night there. The hospital's generator and backup generator had failed, and doctors decided it was safer to keep everyone on the roof than carry fragile patients back downstairs.

"The hospital was so hot that with no rain or anything, they were better off in the fresh air on the roof," he said.

When patients have been evacuated, where to take them becomes the next big decision.

"They're having to make strategic decisions about where to send people literally in midair," said John Matessino, president of the Louisiana Hospital Association. "It's a very difficult thing to prioritize when they're all a priority."

Knox Andress, an emergency nurse who is regional coordinator for a federal emergency preparedness grant covering the state, said it's impossible to underestimate the critical role hospitals are playing for anyone left in the city.

"They're running out of their medications, they're running out of money. They're having social issues and where do they go? They go to the hospital. The hospital is the backbone of the community because the lights are always on," he said.

When hospitals can't take care of people and the rescuers need rescued, there's no social fabric left, Andress said.

Hospitals weren't the only facilities with troubles.

Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who has been working with search and rescue, confirmed that 30 people died at a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish and 30 others were being evacuated. He did not give any further details.





This is a pathetic response to a disaster that should have been handled with ease. We put enormous amounts of money into this damn agency and all we get is a bunch of "Barney Fife's" running around shoothing themselves in the feet.

Considering the people of the flooded areas are stealing televisions stereos, refrigerators and other non -essential items and shooting those who try to stop them I could easily see why relief people are uncomfortable about going in. News reporters have been advised to steer clear of many areas due to uncontrolled violence. If the police or anyone else were to shoot the looters then the outcry would rise that the innocents were being slaughtered like Iraquis. The fact that they were shot when turning a stolen gun on an officer of the law will be unimportant, nr will the thousands of dollars of stolen goods that they are in possession of. The looter will be considered by all to be the victim.
Add to this the fact that as one official said, the relief efforts are hampered by the same problems faced by those trapped in various locations. If a person cannot physically get out then it would stand to reason that there is also difficulty figuring a way in.

Nobody is ever going to be happy about how things are being done and nobody seems to really want to do anything aside from moan and groan.

I think we all share your sadness and anger at what has happened, Montana. I guess we all choose to express it in different ways.

I have been watching everything I can on this since before Katrina hit and I've seen tons of experts who say that there were ways of getting people the help they need and the government is simply not acting on them.
The water stopped rising yesterday and they are not even going to "begin" sending aide in until tomorrow.
Experts showed several areas where food, water and medical supplies could be dropped of by air, but nada is being done.
Bush was on vacation when this thing hit and I for one would like to know why!
They are sending military police in there before they even send in food and water!

Bella
I believe we need to get angry.

We are. But being angry isn't going to change anything. Taking action because we are angry will.

i agree.
but what will anger do if we all just sit at home seething?

Well, it may make people think carefully next time they vote for a new president ;-)

I have read this article previously too. I just hope people will remember
this at election time.