Before you read what is down below, I must warn you, this is the very rough draft, I spent the good part of the day making this and havent had time to do a decent revision. My goal with this is to compile a full list of everything he did wrong with links and relations. So, please be aware that I am not aware of my mistakes or omsissions. Oh, and the formatting is a bit wacked I think
Note: For some reason the hyperlinks were stripped and I have no idea how to format them in, sorry!
Bush is at fault for these reasons:
- As people keep thinking that we blame him for the hurricane, he is not responsible for the natural part, but he is responsible for the failure of leadership for the preparation and response to the hurricane. He is the commander and chief of the United States; it is his duty to protect American people at all costs.
- This president has been on more vacation than any other president, ever. He may need some vacation time, but over 314 days of vacation, that is just wrong, the only other president that did more was Reagan, which I might add, he currently has surpassed (Old article). If he was not on vacation during the time before or after the hurricane, he could have done quite a few things. He could have ordered the immediate mobilization of the National Guard (He must sign off on that for it to happen, it took until Sept. 2 for them to be ok'ed, oh, here is a good quote from that source:
Bush had the legal authority to order the National Guard to the disaster area himself, as he did after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks
authorized additional FEMA spending to help evacuate people from NO and the surrounding areas (all he did was declare a state of emergency along with a which just puts FEMA in charge of running the show, in this case, evacuation) , or at the very least been at the ready if the worst was to happen in DC by calling in both the house and senate to be able to convene and provide aid legislations (FYI, see the Terri Schivo case for how quickly the congress can reconvene, within 24 hours... how did it take them over 3 days for the hurricane?) . After the storm had hit, after the levees had broken (late Monday morning), after people started dying, he then decided to come off of vacation on Wednesday. That in itself is just a sickening thing. On Tuesday, he was in California giving a speech about WW2/911 and attacking social security. Because of his delayed actions, his calling up reservist's and responding to LA plea for aid way too late and in general not accepting aid from outside of the U.S. (Actually it is Rice's fault, seeing as she spent the time in NY watching Spamalot and shopping for $3k pair of shoes, but then again, it is bush's for he should have called her and told her to get to work), oh, and because of her actions, foreign aid has been delayed quite a bit) the problem grew larger and people needlessly died and who knows who died because of the grounding of supply choppers when he did his "tour";
And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.
- And the worst was well predicted (This link is about another bit of lying from bush officials and also how the Army Corp of Engineers was ignored, again) , Katrina was a cat 5 before it made landfall, it was public knowledge that the defenses of NO could only handle a cat 3 and were not complete. The predictions were that Katrina was going to nail NO, which was why a mandatory evacuation was ordered. But the evacuations were horribly organized, leaving tens of thousands of people in the city and because of bush's lack of action on that part (He could have ordered a executive order to put all resources into getting people out of NO when the evacuations started, it wouldn't have been hard to do). As a result, the only people that got out of NO were people who could; the remainders were people in hospitals or were not wealthy enough to get themselves out of there.
- Now, one of the major reasons why this is his fault 100%, is because he was responsible for the people that he put into positions of power. The #1 screw up of his appointees is Michael Brown. Not only has he lied continually about the situation ("We did not know of the people in the superdome until Thursday" or the levee broke on Tuesday not Monday morning) but he is not even remotely qualified for that position. If you think he is qualified, then you need a head exam because the head of disaster management should come from the Red Cross or a veteran FEMA officer, not a lawyer who got fired from the "International Arabian Horse Assoc" Oh, and don't forget, he screwed up getting money to people who really needed it, intentional? I think so! Oh and then there is Rice, man, she really managed to screw up. She actually went on vacation as the disaster unfolded. Now, the sec of state deals with foreign countries, in this case, foreign countries offering aid, a good deal of aid. Imagine if you will, if that aid was accepted and not ignored at first then "considered"!
- The aid could have easily been delivered to the Superdome by helicopter or low altitude supply drops through the use of cargo aircraft based at Pensacola, Andrew's, and other airbases in the area. Instead, it took until Friday for an 8 mile long convoy to make its way to the superdome, a Wal-Mart supply convoy got in on Thursday. The disaster happened at the start of that week and it took until Friday to get aid to these people. I do not buy the argument that the area was either unsafe or unstable for this aid to be delivered. If Coast Guard pilots can pick a person off a roof, a pallet of supplies could just as easily be dropped by a Chinook helicopter. This Washington Post article is able to sum up all the main points and at the same time show why bush is responsible for the failure of FEMA and DHS. Also, don't forget that the American Red Cross was denied entrance to New Orleans, kinda making it hard for them to deliver aid.
- I am still waiting to see order restored in NO. Just a few minutes ago, the Army Corps of Engineers said that some of their workers were shot dead. So, it's what, almost a week and order has not been restored! Slow response indeed!