The definitive statement: failure of Leadership  

Man, that's heavy.

Jesus.

What is Jefferson Parish ?

BTW, it seems that there will be a big contreversy about the management of this disaster in the next coming months. Right now, the time is at help, and US people are always close in time of troubles.

There are 6 incorporated communities in Jefferson Parish:
Grand Isle, Gretna, Harahan, Jean Lafitte, Kenner and Westweg.
More info

Here's an interactive map. Jefferson Parish is just to the West of Orleans Parish/New Orleans. You need to imagine that the area just next to the river (the French Quarter) is high ground and the area in between it and Lake Ponchartrain slopes downward below sea level. This might help as well.

What is happening, Powerdoc, is a catastrophic failure of leadership on a number of levels, and I will be stunned if the death toll doesn't reach into the tens of thousands.

Edit: I hadn't realized JP roped around like that.

Thanks for the input, I am glad to see, that in this sea of desolation named New Orleans, that the town is not entirely destroyed. My wife visited it, once, and we wanted to go there in the next coming years.

I can't believe that in USA the management of this catastrophe is such a failure. I expected to see thousands of helicopters, rescuing people, whole divisions of the army ...
I am really suprised. Let's expect, that thing will go better right now. It's not the time to give up.

My best wishes are with you

Fuck.

Holy shit that was tough to watch. When the time is right there will be investigations into how our government messed up so bad.

The Bush administration's indifference to governance (as opposed to politics) has allowed thousands to die who could have been saved.

I say this will full knowledge that there are still people needing rescue, that thousands if not tens of thousands of bodies still lie undiscovered, that the suffering of those that have escaped will continue for years and that the destruction of a great American city is a calamity that we can barely begin to imagine.

But it needs to be said, starting now, and for as long as it takes, because the Bush spin machine has already started its disinformation campaign, and they certainly won't wait till the wounds are healed to start rewriting history.

Clearly, the idea is to blame it on the locals. There have already been planted stories by "anonymous white house officials" claiming that Governor Blanco never got around to declaring a state of emergency, hampering federal involvement. She declared a state of emergency on August 26, when it was clear that Katrina was going to be big.

They are claiming that federal involvement in a disaster is some kind of elaborate, delicate legal dance wherein all the tees have to be crossed or they are powerless to act. The government's own strategy papers make it clear that the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA are tasked with providing command and control, as well as material aid and personnel in the event of a large scale disaster.

There is, still, an aircraft carrier, the USS Bataan, docked off shore, and which has been there since Katrina made landfall. They have helicopters, food, water, hospital beds and doctors. They are still waiting to be asked to help. This is NorthCom Lt. Commander Sean Kelly explaining that the military was ready, but the call never came from the commander-in-chief:


It is becoming apparent that to the extent FEMA was on the ground, they made things worse, by not allowing aid in or people out. I have no idea what the thinking there was. Apparently, in the case of not allowing in the Red Cross, FEMA was of the opinion that bringing food into NO would slow the process of getting people out.

We all know that the head of FEMA is a political hack with no experience and who seems to remain almost eerily clueless, but what does that say about the man who appointed him to this critical position?

The Director of Homeland Security has made it a habit to hold press conferences where he says things that anybody with basic cable knows are simply false, as if he were inhabiting a sealed bunker somewhere where no bad news is allowed to penetrate.

We know how the Bush admin can spin. We know that they won't hesitate to put forward bald faced lies, over and over again. The difference is that this time the results of their incompetence are in our own back yard, instead of thousands of miles away. We can see with our own eyes the gulf between their talking points and reality, and we don't have layers of "embedded" reporters and translators and "experts' between us and the truth.

This isn't about ideology. This is about the basic competence to deliver on the functionality of the federal government. This is about people who think that government is the problem, and that tax cuts and gutting programs and filling positions with like minded flunkies is the solution.

And now we see the results. This is personal responsibility writ large. This is the United States of America saying "tough shit, you should have planned better for a rainy day, don't expect the nanny state to bail you out".

The only people they know how to save are themselves. The only damage they can mitigate is political.

Is this really the country any of us want to live in?

I must say, though, that I have been very happy with the press (on the ground) so far. They've actually been doing their jobs, it seems. It's only a matter of time, though, before the Bush admin PR machine spins all of this out of control. The Times yesterday reported that the admin has already begun its pushback PR campaign, making Bush take a mulligan on his first trip to the area, and they've already started the standard tactic of shifting the blame.

It's clear to me that this is a PR issue for the admin, and they only moved into action once it became clear that this was playing badly. Why else move Roberts's nomination to CJ so quickly? Change the story.

The simple fact of the matter is that the best thing Bush could do right now is fire everyone involved in FEMA's management, move FEMA out of DHS, and make it cabinet level again.

Yes. As I said elsewehere the clearest (of course not the largest or most importent) failure is Roves. He really dropped the ball on this one.

Some of the coverage has been startling in its frankness. The very same people who have been so complacent about Bush's casual relationship to reality have been shocked into asking real questions. If only they could have experienced the run-up to Iraq with some of the same intensity, we might not have that quagmire on our plate today.


I wonder if he will? It would be highly atypical, since it would require him to admit that he had had a hand in the fuck up, you know, actually take responsibility for something.

More likely is that they will fire anyone who gets off message and opines publicly that FEMA was a day late and a dollar short and that, given the cut backs and administrative castration that it had received, that outcome was entirely predictable.

Seeing how FEMA had been rolled into the DHS, however, how long before people start wondering why it is that four years and untold billions after 9/11 the very administration that has staked its entire sense of legitimacy on "protecting us from the terrorists" failed so abjectly the first time it was called upon to actually do something?

It seems to me that response to a large scale terrorist attack on an American city is almost entirely about rapid deployment, command and control, pre-positioning of assets and coordination of multiple responders, all being areas where the feds specifically fell down.

Saying that Katrina surprised everybody isn't going to cut it, because sure as shit nobody is going to give us a heads up if they detonate a dirty bomb in downtown Chicago.


(edited to fix formatting)

Well, the water is rising, and I'm not talking about NOLA. Remember when DiIullio (sp?) was brought in from Pittsburgh (center of the Republican Universe) to advise on the faith-based initiatives and later left in disgust, calling them Mayberry Machiavellis and then somehow got forced by the admin to retract his comments in Esquire?

Remember how Dick Clarke wrote a book about their failures only to find himself assailed on all sids?

Remember how many times Tenet has fallen on his sword for the promise of a Presidential Freedom Medal?

Well, he ain't doing it again.

I doubt very seriously the good folks of Louisiana will put up with the standard line of disinformation/complication and spin.

Here's what they know: no one came to help them for 5 days.

I hope so.

I hope that we're not so far gone into brutal son of a bitch conservatism that the good people of the god fearing heartland won't be ready to write off New Orleans as a failure of "them": poor people who should have figured out how not to be poor, drowned people who should have gotten their asses to high ground, stupid people who deserved to be culled.

It's already started on the right wing blogs. It's there in the obsession with "lawlessness", as if that was the big problem.

I hope and pray our better natures are still intact, that there still is some sense of a "United States of America" beyond the "every man for himself" corporate free market third world wasteland they've been laying the groundwork for.

Evidence is growing that FEMA actively hampered the relief effort, apparently because they were more worried about pecking order than getting food and water to the victims.

--FEMA ignores offer of massive aid and requests one truck from Chicago:


--FEMA won't let Red Cross in:


FEMA discourages first responders:


FEMA ignores offers of help from the private sector:


FEMA turns back diesel fuel from Coast Guard and water from Walmart:


FEMA prevents volunteer morticians who want to help with the bodies from entering NO:


FEMA ignores well equipped Navy relief ship:


FEMA turns down generators and seizes local equipment:


And that doesn't even include the many anecdotal accounts of people ready, eager and willing to help, with food, boats, planes and medicine, being prevented from entering the city.

It would one thing if this all led to tightly coordinated response, but as we know, it led to no response. It's as if FEMA preferred nothing getting done to things getting done outside of their control.

I really don't think it's unwarranted to start talking about criminal charges.

NPR reported earlier in an interview with Gene Taylor that Brown insisted on A SINGLE DISTRIBUTION POINT FOR FOOD instead of several.

Dude needs to go back to judging the judges of Arabian horses. Fucker gets his job because he's college buddies with the PREVIOUS director.

Cronyism.

And when cronyism gets a bunch of people killed it's time to clean house.

I say we start with the guy who entrusted the agency to this well connected jack-ass.

Well, at least FEMA had time to whip a little rap for the kids:

Oh, hell, and while I'm at it, what the fuck is up with Michael Chertoff?

He keeps giving press conferences where he says things that everybody knows is just complete bullshit. I swear to God, it's like the guy was actually mildly retarded.

Here's one that Wonkette caught:



There follows images of every major newspaper in America with front pages full of stories of devastation and disaster.

They knew the levies were breached by Monday afternoon.

Don't forget that neither Brown NOR Allbaugh had any experience with disaster management when they were brought on.

It's all part of the Rove pushback. Lie in public enough and the press will just report it. The problem, though, is that this isn't some kind of abstract concept like "Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction." It's shit that was being reported on by folks in the field. That's why Paula Zahn, et al have gone batshit over this. Did anyone here see Soledad O'Brien (mmmmmmm) tear into Brown about people at the convention center?

Hey, wasn't that Allbaugh guy Bush's 2001 campaign manager? Now THAT was fucking disastrous.

--B

Yup. That's the same guy. Forget about bringing trusted friends on as advisors or senior staff...Bush put them in CHARGE of things that they had NO EXPERIENCE in.

Ugh.

Yeah, that's the surreal thing about the field reporting.

After 6 years of somnolent stenography, members of the press actually saw, up close and personal, what lethal incompetence looks like.

And it turns out it makes them mad. Who would have thought?

Some of the weirdest exchanges were people on site openly breaking with official narrative being oozed by the folks back in the air conditioned studios.

Even Anderson Cooper pretty much lost it.

Is anyone mad at the Mayor on NO for delaying the mandatory evacuation order because of liability reasons?

Is anyone mad at the conservatives for trying to shift the blame from an endless array of mind-numbingly bone-headed decisions by FEMA to the local officials? Why didn't Nagin personally go from door to door and carry people out of the city on his back? Why didn't Nagin ensure that every poor black person in the lower 9th was listening to WUNO's public radio broadcast on a Saturday night?

Jesus. No one came to help them for five days.

I guess not. That other guy got ban for having a position similar to mine. I'll shut up now I don't want to get banned.

Jeez. Giant? Giiiiiant? Care to explain the equal opportunity banning around here?

And who got banned?

I don't know the guy with the X at the end of his name. I'm giving up now. You guys win, I loose.

K. See you later, NaplesX.

Olbermann swings for the fences.

A must see.

On the other hand, at the other end of the universe, the ever gracious Barbara Bush.

Surveying the homeless masses in the Astrodome, she remarks:

"So many of the people in the arena here, they're underprivileged anyway.... (chuckles) This is working very well for them."

I've got an idea. Let's take every extent member of the Bush clan, including, say, out to second cousins, and use them as sand bags.

The aggregate decency of the US would take a sharp uptick.

dp

First there is a bungled Civilian attempt to respond to the storm with little or no Federal backup.

On Friday Bush visits the area and says things will change.

Late Friday sees the Military enter the scene and immediately things start changing for the better. These guys are organized.

Now the country sees that it's better to let the military come to your town to solve your problems instead of relying on your local or state governments.



don't say you weren't warned.

Of course that's a far more likely explanation.

I just thought this thread needed a little SJO touch to it...