There Are No Words...

[JR]

Originally Posted by *KK*

Oh please, the federal government handled this situation about as well as the average kindergarten class would have. Everything they've touched, they've fucked up. Letting FEMA make decisions about what should be used to do what and setting the priority lists for action only made the situation worse. Ray Nagin is livid over the whoe disaster, and with very good reason. Working on the levee breaks on Tuesday as a top priority would have saved thousands of homes and millions in damage.

I lived in New Orleans for two years, and when you hear that something like this could happen, yeah, you shrug it off and go on with your day.

I cannot for the live of me imagine how those people are even getting by day to day. You take 100 degrees, near 100 percent humidity, then add 8-20 feet of water where there's usually not any, then you toss in an understaffed and overwhelmed police department, no apparent relief from outside in the form of troops until its so far past the necessary point that you end up with a complete breakdown in civility.

What's so hard to understand here, Lord of the Flies isn't that long of a read.

i was really struck by the logic of pulling national guard troops "because its too dangerous" as that seems to imply that as time progressed and the situation continued to erode, it would become somehow, less dangerous.

[Nickatilynx]

Originally Posted by JR

i was really struck by the logic of pulling national guard troops "because its too dangerous" as that seems to imply that as time progressed and the situation continued to erode, it would become somehow, less dangerous.

So, Iraq is not too dangerous to send troops into?

[JR]

Originally Posted by Nickatilynx

So, Iraq is not too dangerous to send troops into?

i am not sure what you mean. i meant that it seemed a little odd to use the rationale that NO is too dangerous to help people when the situation is obviously deteriorating by the second.... i.e., not giving people food, water, medical care etc is not a formula to make it more stable and less dangerous.

[Dravyk]

Originally Posted by JR

i am not sure what you mean. i meant that it seemed a little odd to use the rationale that NO is too dangerous to help people when the situation is obviously deteriorating by the second.... i.e., not giving people food, water, medical care etc is not a formula to make it more stable and less dangerous.

JR, some fucktard (not sure who, but definitely not a military guy, either a pol or a bureaucrat) said somewhere in the press that they were holding back the Reserve in Baton Rouge (at the time) because he said "it was too dangerous to send them in".

This was a few days ago when they had 4,000 amassed there and no was sending them in yet, and that was allegedly the (cough, choke, spew) "rationale" behind it.

Wish I could find that damned article, but read too many over the past week to recall where I'd read it.

[Dravyk]

Though tons of places to put blame ... Here's some more from the White House's part in this ...

"Bush had the legal authority to order the National Guard to the disaster area himself, as he did after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks . But the troops four years ago were deployed for national security protection, and presidents of both parties traditionally defer to governors to deploy their own National Guardsmen and request help from other states when it comes to natural disasters."

and

"In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the government quickly put private cargo and passenger planes into service. The CRAF provision has been activated twice, once for the Persian Gulf War and again for the Iraq war."

[*KK*]

Originally Posted by JR

i was really struck by the logic of pulling national guard troops "because its too dangerous" as that seems to imply that as time progressed and the situation continued to erode, it would become somehow, less dangerous.

No argument from me at all. You're spot on.

As for the people that still refuse to leave, where the hell are they going to go? If you think that Houston, Baton Rouge or any other city wants a bunch of poor, homeless, uneducated people filling their streets, that's just totally unrealistic.

[Dravyk]

Originally Posted by *KK*

No argument from me at all. You're spot on.

As for the people that still refuse to leave, where the hell are they going to go? If you think that Houston, Baton Rouge or any other city wants a bunch of poor, homeless, uneducated people filling their streets, that's just totally unrealistic.

Not only that, Kimmy. There's a lot of serious sick people (physically I mean) basically trapped in their homes and without medicine. Relatives can't get into town and rescue agencies are ignoring their calls. Only CNN listened and said, we'll get back to you on Tuesday, it's a holiday weekend.

If they're not out walking the streets, they apparently do not exist.

And supposedly goverment officials and (sigh) the media are playing things up (last I heard) that because the Dome has been evacuated, the all of NO has been evacuated too. Which isn't the case. And a lot of those people in their homes aren't even necessarily the impoverished.

A lot are middle class elderly who could handle themselves alright when there was a city around them, the grocer boy down the street to deliver food, the pharmacy down the block to give them their medicines, etc.

Here for details, compliments of InterCosmos: http://www.livejournal.com/users/int...80.html#cutid1

[urb]

Just heard from a friend's sister who lives in NO.

The water is going down, but they have alligators swimming around outside eating dead bodies?!?!?!



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