If it's alright with you I'll quote the parts that I find particularly disgusting.
Black lawmakers angry about federal response to Katrina
At a news conference Friday, black members of Congress were critical of the relief effort for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Black members of Congress expressed anger Friday at what they said was a slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
"It looks dysfunctional to me right now," said Rep. Diane Watson, D-California.
She and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with members of the Black Leadership Forum, National Conference of State Legislators, National Urban League and the NAACP, held a news conference and charged that the response was slow because those most affected are poor.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Illinois, said too much focus has been placed on the looting, taking away from what should be the priority: getting food, water and stability to the tens of thousands of displaced victims.
It's hard to know where to start.
It's pretty apparent at this point that the man responsible for most of the terrible things you have seen in the past few days is going to go unpunished. In fact, it appears that this man will go on to appear a victim in this tragedy. I've read countless blogs, some blaming the President for lack of concern, some blaming FEMA for lack of response, many blaming the rich for not caring for the poor. However, I've yet to see a single blog or media story call out the man who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians.
That man is NOT George Bush.
That man IS Ray Nagin.
A cat5 storm hit his town and Ray Nagin did nothing. Looters began taking food that was not theirs to take, and Ray Nagin did nothing. Looters began stealing guns, and Ray Nagin did nothing. Looters began breaking into medical facilities and pharmacies to steal narcotics and Ray Nagin did nothing. Looters turned to assailants, attacking rescuers attempting to airlift stranded individuals and Ray Nagin did nothing. Assailants turned to sexual predators as men attacked, raped, and murdered women and children and Ray Nagin did nothing. One particularly disturbing account of such activities reads as such:
Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, said men had wandered the cavernous convention center in recent nights raping and murdering children.
She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents inside the convention center.
"She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night."
What could Ray Nagin have done? Well the easy answer to that is, of course, something. He could have properly planned and trained his local law enforcement to handle a catastrophe such as this. He could have, once the hurricane hit and passed seized and secured the local grocery stores and used the food and supplies to feed the survivors. He could have seized and secured the local gun retailers to prevent them from falling into the hands of looters. He could have seized and secured the local pharmacies and hospitals so that they could be used to treat the wounded and sick. He could have taken serious steps to stop looting at the first signs to send a message to others that it would not be tolerated.
He could have preserved order.
Instead he promoted lawlessness and disorder. He sent thousands of refugees to the local convention center and did NOT alert FEMA. In fact, FEMA officials learned of this decision from watching CNN's coverage. The result was thousands of people packed into a small space with nobody in charge. No authority whatsoever. That's why you have men raping children to death in public. That's why people are starving to death.
And this man has the nerve to get on the air and blast the Feds for not doing enough to help. Yes, it's true that FEMA could have done more, but at least they did something.
Tell me again how President Bush doesn't like black people.
Tell me again how FEMA's response is inadequate.
Tell me again how it's rich America's fault that poor people in New Orleans are dying.
Heck, even Mayor Nagin has some blame to pass around:
“I don’t know if it’s the governor’s problem [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco] or if it’s the president’s problem but they need to get their asses on a plane and sit down the two of them and figure this out right now.”
Everyone's problem except yours, eh Mr. Nagin?
7 comments:
I think Mayor Nagin has performed poorly throughout this mess and then, has blamed others. I address some of these issues on my blog today.
this whole tragedy has been shocking to me! I hate to pass blame on anyone because I'm confident none of these people have been sitting on their hinnies doing nothing for the past week. I'm sure they have all been working extremely hard and feel more responsibility, shock, and disapointment then we do. However I do agree (to an extent) with Scott that it is unbelievable that the Mayor was not better prepared. If you order a mandatory evacuation you should help the poor and sick with transportation. And if we saw this storm coming for several days why was there not more food and water stored at the super dome? How come no one knew there were people at the convention center? I could go on but we have all witnessed the numerous misses on the news. I don't want to get into the blame game we all tend to point the finger. (Mom of course blames Bush) I just hope we can learn something from this tragedy and feel enough anger, shock, sadness...whatever...to motivate us to donate, pray, serve, do whatever we can to help fix it!
Thanks for your thoughts Scott and Lauren it is such an upseting and sensitive situation I think we all feel very strongly about it.
You hit the nail on the head with that one .Hmmmm I guess he hates blacks that is why he did nothing ..lol
This was a failure of leadership and government at every conceivable level. To place it at the feet of one person... whether that person is Chertoff, Bush or Nagin, is overly simplistic.
I believe that Nagin was at fault, as was the governor for not having made proper preparations, as well as not providing leadership all the way through.
I also believe that ineptitude at FEMA and DHS made the problem FAR WORSE than it ever should have been. This is a national disgrace, and everyone who failed the people of NOLA should be taken to task over it.
I don't place the blame wholly on Nagin, but posted this because he seems to have completely exonerated himself of any blame by simply passing the buck to the one man the brainless masses hate more than anyone else.
If that's what ends up happening, I agree that that would be wrong and would be a shame. Nagin screwed up big time, even according to some intractable lefties.
I hope the whole thing doesn't degenerate into some partisan melee, because if it does, nothing will be learned, and we'll all be doing this again some time.
But just for the record, last time we counted, the brainless masses were pretty evenly divided on Mr. Bush: 51-48%.
I found the following analysis very well reasoned:
http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_4_05_RT.html
I shared the author's sense of confusion in the first few days after Katrina hit...why are these people shooting at rescue helicoptors? Why are they murdering each other in the shelters?
On a separate topic, Nagin recently complained that the Coast Guard VADM who was put in charge after Brown left had declared himself the "crown federal mayor of New Orleans". Wait a minute...how can you simultaneously abdicate all responsibility for administering your city to federal agencies and then complain that you are now irrelevant?
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