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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (252760)	9/26/2005 10:18:26 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571889

The reason the appropriate watercraft were not in place was that nobody in a position of leadership ordered that they be deployed! Before the hurricane hit I suggested that Amtracks be deployed in case they were needed. They never were deployed and just sat there. These amphibious vehicels were driven from Kuwait into Baghdad in he overthrow of Iraq - but couldn't be used to save Americans? It is clear that something must be done to allow the president to take control where you have incompetent local leadership. No doubt about that. But there are going to be those who oppose such legislation, and it is likely reasonable to expect a legal challenge to any such legislation at some point. Not sure what you mean by "deployed". However, with a hurricane, it is essential that rescue materiel not be "deployed" in such a way that the hurricane might destroy it. Another often-overlooked factor is that well more than a half day was wasted while authorities dealt with the local gang violence against rescuers. While this wasn't desirable, obviously, it is also forgivable, in the sense that there was no reason for federal rescuers to have anticipated such a thing. I'm sure this is one of the lessons learned. I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that FEMA screwed up that badly. The red tape needs to be dealt with, and the chain of command needs to be sorted out. But overall, the issue was the scope of the problem, which is far bigger than any natural disaster in American history and far bigger than any terrorist incident is likely to be. FEMA should learn from its mistakes and move forward. If nothing else comes from this, I would hope the following changes are made: a) President gets authority to take control to get around incompetent local administration; b) A detailed chain-of-command is established so that jurisdictional disputes are resolved without issue; and c) An infrastructure is established that provides for common communications facilities in the event of a total failure as well as GPS location of all emergency personnel in the disaster zone. With these changes, most of the problems would be solved. Bush, in assuming responsibility, was premature IMO. But it is his nature to say, "The buck stops here, now let's move forward". Clearly, the guy has more integrity and class than all of Congress combined.