Finally, this weekend we began to see good news from New Orleans. The Superdome is now completely evacuated, as is Charity Hospital. Offers of aid poured in from countries around the world. The work ahead--removing bodies, rebuilding the city, caring for thousands and thousands of displaced people--remains formidable, but at least the streets are no longer in chaos.
Now people are starting to ask difficult questions of the President and his administration. Slate shows how newscasters began to get angry and question lawmakers who claimed the relief effort was going well. CNN.com ran a piece that contrasted FEMA's assertions with the observations of reporters on the ground. Amazingly enough, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff still claimed in an interview Saturday that the hurricane was "breathtaking in its surprise," despite the fact that in 2002 the Times-Picayune ran an extensive series in the paper predicting a similar scenario. By and large, the world press saw the reaction to the disaster as reflecting unfavorably on the Bush administration.
Much as I'd like to find a scapegoat, I'm not claiming that all the problems in New Orleans were personally caused by George W. Bush. But as a citizen who has just watched other citizens dying in the streets for lack of food, water, and medical care, I want answers. Why did the response take so long? Why did officials not realize the magnitude of the disaster right away? Why did it take so long to get food and water to desperate people? Who is accountable?
I'm heartened to see that the press and the public aren't buying the administration's party line any more. Bush's strategy of saying the same thing over and over and stubbornly insisting that it's true won't work this time. We saw the chaos in New Orleans. We want answers.
Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
2 Comments:
I want answers too! That's for sure. It's odd. Initially, I said that this tragedy was horrid, but the one straw of hope was that it was not like September 11th, no one could be blamed except nature. But, alas, now there are people to blame.
Damnit...I just have to tell you I got the stupid word verification challenge at the bottom of this comment wrong. I feel so dumb when I do that.
Funny how when September 11 happened, the Bushies said, "Golly, we NEVER imagined this could happen!" and then oops, it turned out that, oh, wait, a whole bunch of national security types had been worried about that very thing for years. Now the Bushies have the nerve to say, "Golly, we NEVER imagined a hurricane could strike New Orleans!" ... except that, oops, FEMA had predicted it to be one the top three most likely disasters the nation could face, and they even ran a major exercise based around that very scenario. AGGGHHH.
The other thing that worries me, though, is that a bunch of people are now going to call for "an investigation into what went wrong," and about two years from now, a new report will come out that no one will read. Terrific.
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