Bill O'Reilly raises some legitimate

Bill O'Reilly raises some legitimate questions in his Talking Points Memo. One has to wonder why the mayor of New Orleans would order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans and then tell folk there that they could stay behind if they chose. Perhaps someone should invest in a dictionary for Mr. Nagin so he can look up the word "mandatory." Also, why did the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Blanco, wait so long before taking action? Part of the evacuation plan in New Orleans included the use of city and school buses and other government vehicles to get the people that couldn't leave themselves out of the city. Yet these buses were never used. Rather they were parked in low lying areas where they were flooded. Why didn't Mr. Nagin explain that although the Superdome would be used as a shelter there would be no food or water there? Everyone wants to point the finger at the President. We've heard "underfunding of levees," "Bush doesn't care about black people," "Bush is oblivious," etc. None of these libs seem to be taking into account that the state of Lousiana and the city of New Orleans are governed, as any state and city in the U.S., by local government officials first and foremost and not by the federal government. Sure the federal response could have been faster but these things take time and as far as I saw, the federal response was adequate considering the circumstances. The bottom line is Nagin and Blanco knew that Katrina would at the very least be a category 4 storm when it hit. The experts were predicting it to be a category 5 and to directly hit the New Orleans area. Nagin and Blanco also knew that those levees were designed to withstand up to a category 3 hurricane. That was something which was decided long before Bush even thought about stepping into office. Nagin and Blanco didn't take this storm seriously. They didn't take adequate steps to protect the citizens of Louisiana and New Orleans. The fact that thousands have likely died in this storm isn't the fault of Bush, Michael Brown, or anyone in the federal government. The blood of the dead rests on the hands of Nagin and Blanco.

UPDATE: Need I even mention the fact that Louisiana officials prevented the Red Cross from bringining in food, water, and other supplies initially because they didn't want a lot of people storming those shelters?

Technorati tags: katrina, hurricane katrina, New Orleans, Politics

Posted by everyman at September 8, 2005 08:34 AM | TrackBack