Bush faces new challenge amid flood of bad news

[KiwiCoromandel]

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina is a dangerous political challenge for President George W Bush even as he grapples with a string of bad news on the Iraq war, soaring gas prices and slumping approval ratings.

The widespread destruction on the Gulf Coast, one of the worst natural disasters in US history, threatens to hit all Americans in the pocketbook by wreaking havoc on gas prices and the US economy.

The result, analysts say, could be new questions about Bush's leadership and priorities, particularly his decisions to push for big tax cuts and pour billions of dollars into an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

"This is a supreme test of Bush's leadership at a time when resources are thin and his approval ratings are perilously low," pollster John Zogby said.

more here.......

http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3397707a12,00.html

[Kooperman]

Bush will face accountability only if the mainstream media holds his feet to the fire and overcomes their fear of Karl Rove and the Republican machine. No other president has done such a poor job and managed to keep such a solid base. It speaks volumes about the blindness of that 45-50% and the docility of the political reporters.

[The Hunter]

He cut budgets that would have made possible the repairs, and much needed improvements to the levy system while pissing away untold dollars on a trip to neverland, IE a war that was not a war, but an invasion IMHO. He screwed around when he should have been putting his full attention on the disaster. To top it all off, after screwing us on the free trade agreement here in Canada over softwood lumber, when we have the available resources, and want to help he still couldnt fast track our people in to help. These people need help now, not fucking rhetoric. Get our dart team in to provide needed services. They need water there, we can provide it, and a hell of a lot more.

[Wolfie]

If half of the logistics sent to Iraq was used here in last few days there would be less dead people in aftermath. You can't really help deaths during hurricane but when people continue to die because resources are not being used to rescue them, that is neglect.

I guess he still reading his story book like after planes hit the twin towers.

[The Hunter]

It was a bad hurricane, but if the money spent on a lie had been put into the levys, it is quite likely that we would not be seeing the carnage we are now watching. His advisors need a serious ass kicking also. Lets see we have walls made to protect in a, I dont know, a force 2, or 3 storm, and we have a force 5 incoming. Hey George we got a problem, and it could cause monumental loss of life, property, and really screw up our industries. His answer, "dont bother me Im on R&R. (vacation)

[DudeAsInCool]

The interesting thing about all this is that the money that was there to fix the levy's was transferred to Homeland Security. Now Homeland Security has been put in charge of the cleanup in New Orleans. How is it possible that several days in, there was never a plan in place. Lets suppose that terrorists struck the Gulf Port and the city of New Orleans instead of a hurricane - wouldnt have mattered because it doesnt appear that Homeland Secuirity is prepared for any disaster... which is a very sad thing.

[Wolfie]

Lets suppose that terrorists struck the Gulf Port and the city of New Orleans instead of a hurricane - wouldnt have mattered because it doesnt appear that Homeland Secuirity is prepared for any disaster... which is a very sad thing.

True, but can you imagine the "we told you so" campaign that Karl Rove would have came up with?

In either case HS would failed miserably but Bush's numbers would have recovered with a terrorist attack rather than an ass whooping from mother nature.

[The Hunter]

And homeland security is preventing us from sending aid.

[DudeAsInCool]

And homeland security is preventing us from sending aid.

So what the hell is it good for?

To make matters worse, they are closing all these bases, which could

provide shelter, etc, for disasters just like this!

I dont get it...

[The Hunter]

This pisses me off beyond belief. Canada was shit on because we didnt join in on the war on bullshit, but we opened our homes to those displaced people when planes couldnt land elsewhere after 911. We provided air support, yes we have planes. PS we here in atlantic canada took in a lot of folks from these planes. Now again we are not allowed to help. Yes we will be there after a while, but we were ready to go and help now, and the door was closed. They are not a security threat. They are millitary, and can cover their own asses, so just let them do what they are trained for. Helping people.

[slum_goddess]

Hunter, i agree w/everything you've said above--i almost shit when i read that bu$hCo rejected help from Canada, Germany and a few other EU countries (don't remember now).

people are dying and they STILL can't do anything right and forget it if any other country (all 2nd rate countries to these arrogant fucks) wants to help, forget it (the hubris is stunning).

[Kooperman]

I read tonight that CBS had a poll in which 54% said that they thought the Bush administration is doing a good job in responding to the damage done by Katrina...if that's truly representative of the American people, it's about time for me to get a passport.

[slum_goddess]

who could they poll apart from people who are safe up north or wherever, out of harm's way.

[KiwiCoromandel]

I read tonight that CBS had a poll in which 54% said that they thought the Bush administration is doing a good job in responding to the damage done by Katrina...if that's truly representative of the American people, it's about time for me to get a passport.

welcome to new zealand koop...you`ll love it down here.... :)

[DudeAsInCool]

Bush Says Relief Efforts Not Acceptable

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/02/D8CC71500.html

[DudeAsInCool]

World Is STunned!

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/02/M..._BAU248384.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Mayor Seethes About Fed Relief Eforts: "They Don't Have A Clue"

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.ad...824033709990005

[DudeAsInCool]

Even Republicans were criticizing Bush and his administration for the sluggish relief effort. "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

[KiwiCoromandel]

World Is STunned!

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/02/M..._BAU248384.html

very good article dude...and very sad.....this is certainly the way that the situation is being viewed outside of america......and i guess that you can`t blame a lot of the world`s population for seeing things that way...whether that`s good or bad is another debate.....:(

[KiwiCoromandel]

Storm of anger as US fails its own.......

American bewilderment has turned to fury as the richest nation on earth fails to rescue its own people from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, which has left scenes of anarchy and Third World desperation.

Much of the anger is directed at President George Bush as the nation tries to comprehend television images of floating corpses, of lawless mobs, and of Americans pleading for food, water and medical help.

Troops have been given shoot-to-kill orders in a bid to stop looting and restore law and order.

As authorities only guess at a death toll - it could be in the thousands - there are reports of women and a young boy and girl being raped in the New Orleans Superdome, while other refugees there are terrorised by rioters.

"This is a national disgrace," says Terry Ebbert, the head of emergency operations in New Orleans. "[The Federal Emergency Management Agency] has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

The agency's officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire had broken out but they insisted they were working overtime to feed people and restore order.

Garry Jones, one of four Australians driven to safety by a Channel Seven crew after being stranded on the flooded streets of New Orleans, said: "We're looters, like everybody else. You've got to go into the markets. You've got to take water. You've got to take food."

Joining relatives of other trapped Australians in criticising the Australian response to the disaster, Mr Jones told Seven: "We've rung the Australian consul 4000 times. They say they can't get in here. We understand their position but, geez, Johnny Howard, where are you?"

In the New Orleans convention centre, refugees are living next to the dead, with no one in charge of increasingly angry crowds. CNN showed footage of an old woman who had died in a wheelchair at the centre. She was covered by a blanket. Another body, wrapped in a sheet, lay next to her.

"I don't treat my dog like that," said 47-year-old Daniel Edwards, pointing at the woman in the wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

When Mr Bush visits New Orleans, he may have to answer increasing criticism that his Administration took money from a program to reinforce the levee banks to fund the war on Iraq.

The former head of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded.

"Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in," said Mike Parker, a former congressman.

Mr Bush, aware of mounting criticism of his handling of storm relief, told ABC television: "Well, I fully understand people wanting things to have happened yesterday. I understand the anxiety of people on the ground. I just can't imagine what it's like to be waving a sign saying, 'Come and get me now.' So there is frustration, but I want people to know there's a lot of help coming."

Congress met to vote for a $US10.5 billion ($13.7 billion) relief package, but Joshua Bolton, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called this a "stopgap". The emergency agency is spending $500 million a day. Mr Bush said two former presidents, George Bush senior and Bill Clinton, would head a private fundraising effort.

The Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, said that troops were "battle-tested".

"They have M-16s and are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults. "We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," he said.

In Houston, the Astrodome was declared full after accepting more than 11,000 hurricane refugees, less than half the estimated 23,000 expected on buses from New Orleans. Buses were sent on to other shelters. The New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, said: "This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the convention centre and don't anticipate enough buses."

source:smh.com.au

[KiwiCoromandel]

Budget cuts delayed flood controls.........

Bush Administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements to the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, documents show.

The former head of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage would probably have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded over the years.

"Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in," said Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who headed the corps from 2001 to 2002.

"I'm not saying it would have been totally alleviated but it would have been less than the damage that we have got now."

Much of the New Orleans flooding came after two levees broke.

A May 2005 engineers corps memo said funding levels for fiscal years 2005 and 2006 would not be enough to pay for new construction on the levees.

Agency officials said on Thursday that delayed work was not related to the breakdown in the levee system and Mr Parker told Reuters the funding problems could not be blamed on the Bush Administration alone.

Mr Parker said a project dating to 1965 remains unfinished and that any recent projects would not have been in place by the time the hurricane struck even if they had been fully funded.

The White House said the Administration had funded flood control efforts adequately.

Tensions over funding for the New Orleans levees emerged more than a year ago when a local official asserted money had been diverted to pay for the Iraq war. In early 2002, Mr Parker told the US Congress that the "war on terror" required spending cuts elsewhere in government.

New Orleans relied on a 480-kilometre network of levees, floodgates and pumps to hold back the waters of the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain.

Levees were fortified after floods in 1927 and 1965, and Congress approved another ambitious upgrade after a flood killed six people in 1995.

Since 2001, the corps has requested $US496 million ($651 million) for that project but the Administration budgeted only $US166 million, figures provided by the office of the Democratic Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu show.

Congress ultimately approved $US250 million for the project during that period.

Another project designed to shore up defences along Lake Pontchartrain was similarly underfunded, as the Administration budgeted $US22 million of the $99 million requested by between 2001 and 2005. Congress boosted spending on that project to $US42.5 million, Senator Landrieu's office said.

The levee defences had been designed to withstand a milder category 3 hurricane and were simply overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina, said a senior project manager, Al Naomi.

"The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature because we were not authorised to provide a category 4 or 5 protection design."

source:Reuters

[KiwiCoromandel]

America wakes up to refugee nightmare........

AMERICANS are shocked to the core. Images of refugees in their own land - not from some far-away developing country - dying of thirst in one of their major cities, marks a profound moment in the nation's psyche.

Four years ago, George W.Bush was able to unite the country against a common enemy when he stood beside the smoking ruins of the World Trade Centre in New York after September 11 and declared war on a terrorist ideology.

But now there's no one to hunt down. You can blame Mother Nature, but all the talk here is about the ineptness of the federal and state governments, which many claim failed to prepare for a catastrophe experts have warned against for years.

And the horrendous situation has been made worse by the botched relief effort.

While the US President spoke yesterday of the orderly delivery of humanitarian aid to New Orleans, desperate refugees outside the convention centre in the heart of the city screamed at the television cameras, begging for food and water.

It is an unfathomable mystery that, along with bolstering security in the post-apocalyptic waterworld of New Orleans, the authorities did not airlift basic supplies to the convention centre and the nearby Superdome, where more than 40,000 people gathered in the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Katrina.

It is a disgrace.

People have waited for days. Many are dying. Corpses lie among the stranded.

Meanwhile, criminal gangs have taken the law into their own hands, looting weapons and hampering the rescue efforts.

This has meant the rhetoric from state and federal authorities in the past 24 hours has been more about securing the area against the criminals who effectively held more than 40,000 people hostage, rather than tackling the massive floodwaters.

But the stranded refugees of New Orleans just wanted to hear when they could get something to drink and when they could get out.

All this is making the US look impotent in saving its own people against home-grown thugs and the effects of natural disaster.

Things should improve this weekend, when thousands of US troops arrive in Louisiana to bolster security in New Orleans. But why weren't they ready to go earlier? "The response could have been better -- it should have been better," said former New Orleans mayor Sidney Barthelemy.

And 47-year-old Daniel Edwards, outside the Convention Centre, hit on a political theme that may rock the Bush administration's second-term strategy and its attempts to bolster support for the war in Iraq.

"You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people," he said. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."

As the death toll mounts and the scope of the giant tragedy unfolds, domestic politics, not the war in Iraq, may dominate. And the Gulf Coast may not be the only thing that Hurricane Katrina has blown away.

source:smh.com.au

[KiwiCoromandel]

Demoralised officers give up the fight........

" Plenty of Chiefs, but not enough Indians " .....

BY his own admission, things are going badly for Sheriff Harry Lee and his crisis management efforts.

Outside his mobile headquarters truck, two officers grip a stepladder while a third stands on the top rung waving his mobile telephone in the air, searching for a signal.

Inside Sheriff Lee, of Jefferson parish in New Orleans, is sitting at a table, fuming.

He is doing his best to alleviate the biggest catastrophe he will ever witness, but lacks even the most basic of resources.

He cannot communicate with his own officers -- his officers can barely communicate with each other -- because the overloaded radio frequency keeps jamming.

The chain of command for Louisiana's hurricane rescue plan has missing links. There is tension between the numerous agencies involved in the relief effort, and some of Sheriff Lee's deputies are so overwhelmed and demoralised that they are giving up.

"It's not getting better -- it's getting worse," he says. "This is probably the largest national disaster in the history of the US and the co-ordination that should be in effect all these days after the event just isn't happening. It's lack of proper planning and lack of co-ordination. There are plenty of Indians, but no chiefs."

Two kilometres from his command post, a section of Highway 10 has become a giant refugee camp. The evacuees are gradually being taken away in buses and trucks to shelters as far away as Houston, Texas.

But some have started turning up at his door, pleading for food and for water.

Some have not had a drink since Tuesday.

"Except a box of crackers for my deputies, I don't have anything to give these people. We don't have water, electricity or toilet facilities. How can I take all these refugees when we can't even take care of our own people?" he complains.

"My deputy just got in a row with the US Coast Guard because they want to bring a cutter up the river here with 3000 people on it.

"I don't have a drop of water or a peanut butter sandwich to give to anyone."

Police officers across New Orleans are striving to help their stricken city, even though they too have lost homes and loved ones, but a handful of Sheriff Lee's men have had enough.

"My chief deputy said some of the other deputies are quitting on us. They want to be with their families. Well, I want to be with my family too, but you don't quit in the middle of a crisis," he said.

"My daughter rang me, crying. She said, 'Daddy, can't you leave?' I said 'Yes, I can point my car west, but can I go and leave these people here? No, I cannot."

Nor will Gregory Vorhoff, a cardiologist at Memorial Medical Centre, desert his post. He hitched a ride on an airboat and then walked for a couple of kilometres to reach the Highway 10 control point to plead for help for his patients.

But there is nobody in charge to help him.

"I almost feel guilty being here knowing the horror I left behind," he said.

"The hospital has no power, no sewer, no elevators. It's impossible to run healthcare in that situation. I thought at least if they are brought this far, there will be help and treatment here, but it's a desperate scene here too."

Further along Highway 10, hundreds of volunteer firefighters, auxiliary coastguards and others with small boats were anxious to rescue people, but were being held back because one of their vessels had been shot at.

"We are trying to do our job here but we can't if they are shooting at us. We don't know who and we don't know why, but we don't want to get in a situation of having to return fire out there," Major Joey Broussard of the Louisiana State Fisheries and Wildlife Division said.

Ken Dunnen, a volunteer firefighter, was out on a cutter and saw surreal scenes.

"Houses are totalled, animals are dead and floating in the water," he said. "We are riding level with the tops of the street lamps ... It's one hell of a mess, one hell of a mess."

source:The Times

[method77]

I read tonight that CBS had a poll in which 54% said that they thought the Bush administration is doing a good job in responding to the damage done by Katrina...if that's truly representative of the American people, it's about time for me to get a passport.

:yup:

come to Greece

[slum_goddess]

if this is true, he's gonna have a shitload to answer for:

"Jack Cafferty: Do you suppose, Wolf, that the arrival of the relief convoys and the political photo ops on the gulf coast happening at the very same time were a coincidence today?

Wolf Blitzer: Uh, well, we'll, I'm sure our viewers have some thoughts on that as well. These pictures, by the way, Jack, that we're getting in...

Wolf Blitzer: Jack a final thought before I let you go.

"Jack Cafferty: It's embarrassing"[followed by dead silence]

'We heard a convoy of those trucks on this online scanner feed last night. They were en route, and the drivers were asking about the parking situation at the Superdome, not long after midnight.

'They held the trucks.'