I don't recall posting the interview with Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman, Sishir. Do you think he made it up? Impeach Bush.
Sorry Ref, but you have to distinguish between the storm and the rest... the preplanning, the immediate pre and post-response, and the long-term response. As a guy who dabbles in disaster response and even trains people, I just do not agree that the preplanning, the assistance before the storm hit, the help after the storm hit, and the rebuilding of the area would be anywhere close to the same under any other modern President... forget the distinction between W and Clinton... nobody would have let the issues go as long and responded as poorly as this administration did. No president would have been as disinterested... no president, including Reagan and 41, would have let ideology trump humanitarian response as much... no president would have made so many promises he had no intention of keeping... and no other president would have allowed their party's apparatchiks to respond and defend indefensible actions by blaming the victims while trying to divide the public reaction by race. Even Reagan would have said, "Knock it off." Finally, no administration would have created such a top-down approach where every major decision had to be run up the flag pole to the WH, even if there was nobody around during the vacation days to make the decision. They made the critical mistake of treating a genuine emergency like a political issue and their only way of dealing with a political emergency is to control the message. They tried to impose a normal message control hierarchy onto a situation that demanded immediate on-the-ground decisions and they curtailed the freedom of many people across the country to respond appropriately. Real events play hell with such an approach as we see all too well in other actions. To illustrate, their was no overall planning during the days after the storm. Different groups of responders covered the same ground while some places were not visited. The only agency that came out looking good was the Coast Guard, who essentially ignored everybody in DHS, plotted their own grids, and effectively deployed their helicopters and resources (until W needed them for a photo op). I could sit here and write for hours about the preplanning, the coordination between agencies and governments before the storm hit and afterwards, the mobilization of responders, and the rebuilding (lack thereof). I'm sorry, but Katrina as a whole would not have been nearly as bad under other presidents. I base that on news articles... but even more on the observations of people I know and trust.
I've seen that interview before but I don't know if you had posted it. I don't think he made it up but it is still highly speculative. I mean GW Bush drew troop levels down in Iraq in 2004 so a memo, that was never implemented, is still speculation.
I can't believe I find myself defending this guy at all....but there is this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/may/28/disasterresponse.famine Bob Geldof astonished the aid community yesterday by using a return visit to Ethiopia to praise the Bush administration as one of Africa's best friends in its fight against hunger and Aids. The musician-turned activist said Washington was providing major assistance, in contrast to the European Union's "pathetic and appalling" response to the continent's humanitarian crises. "You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian. Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children's aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration. "Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said.
Well said. I just recently wrapped up some reports on the environmental aspects of the Katrina response and the undeniable reality was that no coordinated plan was ever even considered. The mission became political recovery, at the cost of actual tangible response. That's deplorable and so utterly inept I can't fathom any other administration duplicating such a travesty. Take this as an example: It took EPA almost 4 months to release their environmental assessment about katrina. It's three pages, and was rendered utterly useless as the analysis was scrubbed to mere soundbites, and most of the sediment (loaded with fecal coliform, heavy metals, and hydrocarbons) was already removed. Moreover, EPA was forced, following a GAO audit, to admit that the report only applied to short-term exposure, although the report never indicated this was the case. In contrast, UNEP's response to the tsunami disaster was a voluminous environmental assessment that covered seven countries. It was released in ~1 month and is an amazingly insightful and data-laden analysis of the environmental reprocussions and recommendations on clean-up and recovery. UNEP had people on the ground in these countries on the day of the disaster in some cases. Hell, freakin Indonesia had military deployed to disaster areas to aid in recovery faster than the US could Katrina. In some cases the military literally carried the supplies in by hand over otherwise impassable terrain. But the US, with the best military, most money, and an immense communication network could not efficiently aid in the recovery of a city well known to be at risk, and with considerable warning of the impending calamity. "No one could have predicted the levees would fail." -Bush Can you believe this guy?
iraq certainly hasn't gone swimmingly... but katrina was the darkest chapter of this administration, from my viewpoint. and among the darker chapters in US history. arguing like law students over federalism while people were left behind in awful conditions.
You do realize that as far as natural disaters go, Katrina (specifically NO )does not hold a candle to the tsunami right? Tsunami Casualties: 229,866 Katrina 1,836 Plus the tsunami has rendered LARGE areas of fresh water lifeless from saltwater and micro-organism infiltration. This for people who make their living and economy on fishing. So the drive for enviro reports is a bit more. Also the coast guard was in there ASAP doing all they could. With the airport shut down and the city flooded its just hard to manuver. People have some concept that the .gov can do anything, and I don't understand this. I am pissed that a large number of National Guard was being used in Iraq at the time.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with rhad, because that's what everything you wrote about the tsunami leads one to believe... or if you're disagreeing with him because that's what your phrasing implies. Nobody's ever said government could do everything. That's a ridiculous bar to try and set. We do know that the federal government in particular could have done more. And done it better.
Casey's posts are -umm- hard for me to see, but now that it's been quoted I am equally confused. Scale was precisely the point in my example. It took US EPA 4 months to release a ****ty and misleading report on Katrina, whereas UNEP wrote a damn book in a month for a disaster that dwarfed the effort EPA was asked to do. And its not just environmental - in almost every aspect of comparison, the tsunami response was overwhelmingly better run than the thrown together heckuva job the bush admin stitched together. And it was multi-country, with no warning, and governments with significantly less resources. Casey's comments that imply a lack of need for environmental assessment in New Orleans demonstrate a complete lack of understanding and should be ignored.
LOL Scale is what I was pointing out. YOu gave numbers in months and subjectiveness in quality. Don;t you think a disaster where 230K people die deserves more expedient and diligent work than with less than 2K deaths? It not that they don't deserve the report, its that ALL RESOURCES are limited. Obviously those countires mere survival depended on the quick environmental situation.
Not exactly. As someone who worked on both the tsunami and Katrina recovery, including travelling to affected areas of the tsunami shortly after the disaster, the tsunami response also was riddled with the same problems of haphazardness, corruption and confusion that happened during Katrina. It only seems good when you consider the scale compared to Katrina which happened to just one country and a superpower. From what I saw of both I will say though that seeing devestated areas of Thailand a month after the tsunami they had recovered better than devestated areas of the Gulf Coast 4 months after Katrina, even just comparing areas where the population density and economy are similar. This wasn't so much a nod to the great job done by the Thai government or NGO's or an indictment of the US government but more in regard to the differences in culture. In both cases the governments' response left a lot to be desired.
I don't know if I should be even trying to argue this, or why I am, but the Louisiana response to Katrina was the ****up of epidemic proportions. The Federal response was better than Andrew and similar to Rita a few weeks later. (Our two closest comparisons.) Our country relies on the States to provide the majority of the disaster preparation and relief. It is the way our country is set up. When my apartment was destroyed in Rita, my only contact with the Federal government was the checks they sent out, meeting their contractors out putting blue roofs on houses, and US Marshalls helping Texas Highway Patrol block roads. Almost all of meaningful the governmental recovery was done by State and local governments, as well as mutual aid from governments all over the country. Could the response of the Federal Government been better? Sure. Could the Federally-built levees be better maintained? Certainly. But if Katrina hadn't happened to the worst-governed city in the worst-governed State, the incompetencies of the Federal Government response would have been a footnote in the news.
You don't make sense. It should have been much more difficult to assemble a detailed EA concerning the tsunami than it was for Katrina, yet that was not the case. The number of deaths has nothing to do with the importance of the assessment. EAs are done to aid the living. Yet, even with extremely limited resources and a vastly larger geographic scale, UNEP put together a vastly superior report in less time. EPA could not even put out 1/100th of the effort and data in 4 times the amount of time. EPA made no recommendations regarding the rebuilding, no assertion regarding ecosystem health. They did not even mentioned the amount of debris, or the huge damage to something as environmentally important as the sewer system (which was demolished, for all intents and purposes). The UNEP report stands as a perfect example of how the EPA should have performed its assessment. It has the advantages of containing a wealth of timely and efficiently collected data, rapidly distributed to concerned nations and communities. More importantly, the UNEP report addresses more than the immediate environmental concerns within spoiled communities – it also addresses a wealth of equally troublesome environmental damage such as debris, trash, sewage and water systems, and ecological damage. The UNEP report gives rough estimates of economic costs due to the damage, and makes recommendations concerning planned reconstruction activities. The EPA report fails to mention any of these additional facets that would normally compose an effective environmental assessment. Again, I really don't know what you are trying to say.
Take into account scale of damage and I believe my point stands. EDIT - sorry, i see you already pointed that out. I'm suprised you would gloss over it so casually.
Yeah I was kinda off topic for a while. This is my point, the need was greater so the effort was greater. Thus comparing the response between them seems invalid to me.
If you read the EPA assessment, you'll wonder if any effort was made at all. Moreover, even if you assume the effort level was acceptable, releasing such a report after the major cleanup has taken place pretty much relegates any effort to ineffectual. Here's one of my favorite quotes, directly from the report: You don't have to be an environmental scientist to see how lazy this statement is.
Except it's not, especially when there's a reasonable assumption that a Cat 5 Hurricane spinning in the Gulf might overwhelm state and local support wherever it landed. The version of the National Response Plan in place before Katrina identified Incidents of National Significance (incidents where the Federal Governemnt would take the lead) as: There was a lot made about the second bullet... when did Louisiana ask for help? When did the request arrive in DC? How soon did the administration act on the request, etc. But look at the other three... I don't know if a Federal Dept outside DHS did request DHS assistance, but it was obvious that a number of agencies would be affected where ever the storm landed. Katrina substantially involved more than one Federal Dept/agency. And... The President could have directed the DHS Secretary at any time, even before landfall, to take control of the incident. I believe every other modern President would have done this. According to the National Response Plan, here's what should have happened: Incidentally, the National Response Plan was a mandate of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive – 5. So, according to a law passed by Congress and a directive signed by the President, for large incidents, the Federal government assumes responsibility. To put something like this on a city or state is absurd on its face. Neither is going to have the ability to deal with it with as many resources as the Feds... particularly when a city is essentially gone and all logistical functions, like communications and transportation, are inoperable. Looking at just communications, how many portable repeaters do you think the state of Louisiana has? How many radios? Radio techs? Helicopters? Just the wildland fire agencies alone have enough to do the job... but people and equipment sat and sat, even after they had taken it upon themselves to prepare for such an event before landfall. And really, the response was not better than Andrew... if the two are even comparable... the response was much worse to Katrina. Rita had people freaked. We were all relatively lucky that Rita was not worse. (I just hope we make it through this administration before the big one hits the LA area.)
It's hard to believe people are still arguing over whether the response to Katrina was adequate. Had this been the result of a terrorist attack, does anyone think the response would have been different from the Administration? Of course it would have, and that is absurd. I never thought I'd miss Tricky Dick Nixon, but the man would have handled Katrina far better than Mr Incompetent, George W. Bush. Impeach Bush for Gross Incompetence.
