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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (11502)	2/11/2006 11:20:16 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541183

There are a lot of things that the Administration did wrong with respect to Katrina, but even the Administration, and certainly this thread, deserve accuracy. Your comments about Condi Rice were made first on 9/1, long after the levees broke. New Orleans, was not "flooding," as you rhetorically but inaccurately suggest, but flooded. As Secretary of State, Rice had absolutely no responsibility for these kinds of incidents. In terms of actual responsibility for a governmental activity, the lowly Postmaster General probably had more at stake than the Secretary of State. Has it occurred to you that a partisan press would hound Rice's every step, reporting every second of her normal routine, and blasting her if she was not constantly pulling out her hair over Katrina? But in point of fact, what could she contribute from her position as the head of the department that deals primarily with foreign affairs? If some urgent foreign problem arose while she was dealing with Katrina, and she failed to deal with it, or didn't attend to it within a nanosecond of it happening, the press and you too, I fear, would have hounded her for abandoning her desk. To suggest, then, that she "evaded" responsibility, is inaccurate. Condi was simply not a good politician. She should have worn black, attended a few prayer services, made a few sympathetic pronouncements, etc., but in the big scheme of things her actual responsibility and her ability to affect an outcome was next to zero. To get incensed about her activities as a private citizen, however, is a bit much. I'm sure thousands of folks bought shoes and attended conventions during Katrina. And, no, there has not been "zero" progress, as you state. You are simply 100% wrong about that. The pace could be picked up, and a lot more could and should have been achieved by now, but there are lots of things that are working. To say "zero" has happened is simply inaccurate. The problem is that once people adopt a mindset based on emotions, and Katrina certainly caused a lot of folks to do precisely that, any attempt to look at the issues objectively goes out of the window.

To: Ilaine who wrote (11502)	2/11/2006 1:08:10 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541183

If we all think back to the time Katrina was known to be heading for the mainland, but NOT known where she would hit precisely, there should have been lots of prep from ALL political groups in the to-be affected areas. From the Mayor's office and each step higher. Because I certainly do know the difference between winds and flooding, having been in both, it does seem to me that the people in the area, could and should have had some concrete plans AHEAD of time. Evacuation, food and water supplies, and all the other etc's SHOULD have been planned for AHEAD of time. New Orleans is mostly, if not all, entirely BELOW sea level. The time for plans for a major disaster should have been done way ahead of the disaster, not after the fact. To say the Mayor is incompetent and a doofus accomplishes nothing after the fact. Ditto the Governor. Those facts speak for themselves. People still died because they were not prepared. Not only personally, but their own city and state were not prepared. Obviously, the Feds, with the 9-11 Commission mandated "over committee, later named Homeland Security, wasn't prepared to let go all the little fiefdoms and have one person in charge. Bush was not for having a GIGANTIC new Department, and more channels to jump through when handling emergencies. But he was being "consolatory". Hillary and Liberman and others were VERY much for the GIGANTIC new Department. Unfortunately, management by committee, has never been successful, IMO. This is yet another example of that.