posted on September 25, 2005 09:13:28 AM new
BUSH HAS TOLD US ALL HE HAS "WORKED HARD" ON POST TERRORISIST PLANS. BUSH HAS TOLD US ALL HE IS "MAKING PROGRESS" AND BUSH HAS TOLD US ALL "WE ARE SAFTER NOW". SURE GEORGE SURE! YOU HAVE SHOWN US ALL NOT TO BELIEVE YOUR WORDS!!!!
Bush Told U.S. Needs Post-Disaster Plan
Sunday, September 25, 2005 10:54 AM EDT
The Associated Press
By DEB RIECHMANN
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Military officials told President Bush on Sunday that the U.S. needs a national plan to coordinate search and rescue efforts following natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
Bush said he is interested in whether the Defense Department should take charge in massive national disasters.
"Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a natural disaster — of a certain size — that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort?" Bush asked. "That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about."
Bush got an update about the federal hurricane response from military leaders at Randolph Air Force Base. He heard from Lt. Gen. Robert Clark, joint military task force commander for Hurricane Rita, and Maj. Gen. John White, a task force member, who described search and rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina as a "train wreck."
With Katrina, "we knew the coordination piece was a problem," White said. He said better coordination is needed to prevent five helicopters, for example, from showing up to rescue the same individual. "With Rita, we had the benefit of time. We may not have that time in an earthquake scenario or similar incident," White said.
"With a national plan, we'll have a quick jump-start and an opportunity to save more people," White said.
Speaking of the helicopter example, White said, "That's the sort of simplistic thing we'd like to avoid." He added, "We're not maximizing the use of forces to the best efficiency. Certainly that was a train wreck that we saw in New Orleans."
Bush thanked White for his recommendations.
"This is precisely the kind of information I'll take back to Washington to help all of us understand how to do a better job," the president said.
Bush's comments came as residents along the Texas and Louisiana coasts began clearing up debris and power crews worked to restore power to more than 1 million customers in four states.
Rita, which hit the Gulf Coast early Saturday, toppled trees, sparked fires and swamped Louisiana shoreline towns with a 15-foot storm surge that required daring boat and helicopter rescues of hundreds of people.
Still, the devastation was less severe than that caused by Hurricane Katrina when it made landfall on Aug. 29.
I HAVE NOT HEARD ONE CON-SERVATIVE LAW MAKER YET SAY THE TAX BREAKS TO THE RICH SHOULD BE CUT BACK TO HELP PAY FOR HURRICANE DAMAGE.
posted on September 25, 2005 12:24:13 PM new
Was there something wrong with the aid/plan last year when hurricanes hit Florida repeatedly? Was/Is there a problem with Rita? Not that I am aware of.
The only problem was with New Orleans, a city under sea level where experts had warned of an eventual disaster for decades, and when it finally happened, no disaster plan was implemented (although it did exist).
People can try to pin this on the federal government all they want, but in all honesty, I don't see how anyone can take the majority of blame off the mayor, and to some extent the governor.
Yes, Katrina was an immense disaster, and the relief effort was slow in coming. But as I said, New Orleans is a unique case. In every other hurricane I can remember, the relief workers were always praised as heroic.
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Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum sonatur.
posted on September 25, 2005 12:57:31 PM new
Texas and the Gulf Coast in general showed the Military and American people we have to have real plan instead of just saying O.K. everybody out. Out to where, out to set on a highway with no place to go and no fuel to get there.
I am sure those are just a couple of many questions the American people asking this President. After this President has been saying "they are safer".
I HAVE NOT HEARD ONE CON-SERVATIVE LAW MAKER SAY THE TAX BREAKS TO THE RICH SHOULD BE CUT BACK TO HELP PAY FOR HURRICANE DAMAGE.
posted on September 26, 2005 02:51:08 PM new
Bigpee, You are the reason I’m pro abortion. Your lack of knowledge and common sense is beyond imagination.
Your sheepish hatred of the President is manic. I suggest you have a couple beers and relax or get back on your meds. BUT PLEASE don't do the drugs with the beers.
You blame the President for everything, You give him credit for nothing. If you want to blame someone for something, blame the right people or person.
I'd be very interested in knowing just where your hatred comes from?
posted on September 27, 2005 09:06:04 AM new
Colin & Linda_K,
You both keep using the CON-servative key word "hate" not me.
I don't "hate" anyone nor do I use the word. I do very much disapprove of what Bush his and your CON-servative form of government is doing to America.
I don't blame Bush for everything. I just expose the many failures and mistakes Bush and your CON-servative Congress and Senate make. I could be busy 24/7 exposing them they are such failures.
You both need to remember you are the people that voted for Bush and CON-servative House Members not me. Its people like you that have to take responsibility for this Government's mistakes because of your vote not me or my vote.
I HAVE NOT HEARD ONE CON-SERVATIVE LAW MAKER SAY THE TAX BREAKS TO THE RICH SHOULD BE CUT BACK TO HELP PAY FOR HURRICANE DAMAGE.
posted on September 27, 2005 11:09:54 AM new
bigpeepa
No one here said 'they hate'. 'Where your hatred comes from' was questioned toward you, yes.
It makes it very hard to understand your post NOT being filled with hate, with everything in Caps, and lots of exclamtion marks (not to mention hard on ones eyes)
The all cap posts makes a reader think 'this person is pissed off' Yes I understand you are pissed, but not all or many 'conservatives' and Republicans are the way you describe.
I never use the word hate. I do not 'hate' anyone. I can dislike people, and that is people that I meet in real life, as for people posting on a message board, I don't even dislike them. I think most everyone has their own opinions and even if I disagree with them, I will still respect their opinions. But when you type your posts, you need to reconsider using all caps. To bold something in here, you use the [$b] and end it with [$/b] Now, you can't have them that far apart, you need those bracketed b's right next to the letter that will start your bolded post, and same with the closed b. And you have to take out the $ also.
If there is a point you want to stand out, then bolding, imo, may help in doing that.
posted on September 27, 2005 12:33:23 PM new
Thanks for the post, Bigpeepa. Unfortunately, the unconditional love given to Bush overrides common sense here.
Regarding Katrina, I especially like it when the right blame the levees, even though they all admit they weren't built to hold Cat. 6 hurricane flooding. What they're really saying is we all knew w-a-a-y ahead of time it would be a total disaster if a hurricane hit, plus we all knew a week in advance Katrina was going to be a devasting storm when it hit land. Even with that much prior information, we still f'd up. That's the real message.
Can you imagine, knowing a week in advance that terrorists were going to strike a certain place and not being ready?
What a complete and utter failure Bush is. He tells you you're all safer yet can't even protect his people from a natural disaster he knew was coming. LOLOLOLOL!!!! I mean, what would it take for any of you to NOT support him? LOL!!
posted on September 27, 2005 12:41:11 PM new
kraft, the levee system, I don't believe can be fixed. They had a plan, and that plan couldn't be done. The levee is sitting on very precarious ground, its shifting all the time, thus the reason that no real plan for a levee could have been implemeted.
Sure the State of LA should tell all their citizens things like this.
They can keep on patching the thing, but its so unstable. If they could come up with a truley solid foundation for it, that would be great, but engineers have studied this thing for years, and nothing. (Pre pre Bush Admin)
posted on September 27, 2005 01:04:31 PM new
I agree, NearTheSea. You just cannot build a city lower than ground level near a river or the ocean where it's a usual occurance for hurricane's and NOT expect to have damage once in a while. Damage this large hasn't happened since the 1900's. It's not like this is normal. And Florida has gone/goes through this almost every year for crying out loud.
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KD - Imo, there's a lot you don't 'get'. You appear to me to want to put this blame on this President, like MOST liberals do, when in FACT, by LAW he could NOT have gone in without prior approval....or request from the locals. PERIOD. That's the LAW. Maybe you don't understand that....but that's the way it's always been. And now, because we're learning from this terrible hurricane, they're presenting a bill at THIS President's request that would, BY LAW, ALLOW the administration to immediately take control.
And on your statement:
I especially like it when the right blame the levees, even though they all admit they weren't built to hold Cat. 6 hurricane flooding.
Get real PLEASE. This President was NOT responsible in any way, shape or form, for the way those levees were built....nor for the damage that occured. To think otherwise is not be being thinking with a clear head. That was and always has been a LOCAL issue that each state is responsible for.
Plus, now we're hearing that there may be some problems with the way they were built in the first place. Like they weren't built the way that it was required to be.
What they're really saying is we all knew w-a-a-y ahead of time it would be a total disaster if a hurricane hit.....
Again....that's an assumption you're making. We didn't KNOW that for sure....we suspected it. But just like we THOUGHT Rita was going to do much more damage than it did, just like we thought a different area was going to be 'hit' by the hurricane....it didn't turn out to be so. I'm trying to say...we GUESS....but we don't know for sure....and with all our coastlines ....all across the US....there's no way we could afford to protect them from Nature's wrath.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on September 27, 2005 01:11:40 PM new
This is true, a President (Bush in this case, but any President) cannot order citizens out, force them out, when it is impending danger (Katrina) If a President did that, everyone would be screaming dictator!
That is one of the reasons we have so many branches of gov't in the U.S. Local, State and Federal (and with some in between)
The local gov't has a problem they either solve it or call on the State, if its too big for the State, they call on the Feds. I do not know how your system works in Canada, but that is how its done here.
posted on September 27, 2005 01:51:48 PM new
The President is responsible for overseeing that things are done properly within his government. Bush just happens to be the President now and the only thing I keep seeing coming from his government is screw-up after screw-up. Why does it take some big disaster before you know if your government is working properly, only to find out it's not? Especially when you know, or are pretty certain a disaster will happen in advance? Seems to me you guys pay big bucks to people that sit on their ass all day figuring out how they can market a safer U.S. instead of providing a safer U.S.
And it's not what happened before Katrina, Linda, it's what happened after. A great example of total lack of preparation, imo.
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.
There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:
"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."
The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."
Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."
posted on September 27, 2005 02:59:17 PM new...even though they all admit they weren't built to hold Cat. 6 hurricane flooding
Of course not, there is no such thing as a category 6
The blame game will never end, one side blaming the other.
Shoulda; woulda; coulda, easy to say now. Get them hands out, no need to take responsibility of your own. Is that the message the left wants to send out?
posted on September 27, 2005 03:17:41 PM new
That Bush has been cutting the NO money for decades. I wonder what they DID do with the hundreds of millions.
Anybody find it funny that the idiots screaming about the Patriot Act now want US Military to go into the cities, which would require passing a law with the same scope as the Patriot Act?
I guess it goes along with one week saying we're going to war to STEAL oil from the Iraqis and the next week complaining about how much the war COSTS.
posted on September 27, 2005 04:04:38 PM new
I would like to know how they are going to have a solid foundation for these levees?
It was on National Geographic years ago, that the levees couldn't hold much longer, and they just hadn't come up with a viable solid foundation for them. Yes they are sinking, I said the same thing in the above post that they are shifting, and they are.
Ane I believe National Geographic more than a 'study' done by
posted on September 27, 2005 06:31:26 PM new
Okay, I'm taking full responseability for the weakened levees.
It was my fault all along. Those that have been on this board for a while know I used to be a Democrat.
Well when I was, I took those millions of dollars.. The government sent down (year after year) to New Orleans to fix said levees and spent it on Wh*res and booze...I may have been doing drugs then too.
I'm sorry, I was only human (at that time). I'm beyond that now.
No, I can't give the money back. I spent the rest on the re-elect George W. Bush campaigne.
posted on September 28, 2005 05:47:30 AM new
I heard this CON-servative President ask the nation to cut back on travel to conserve fuel. I also see the same CON-servative President flying around on U.S.1 for photo ops like crazy. Photo ops like going to New Orleans using generators to light up a New Orleans Chapel for a staged speech.
Sure this President should see the damage the Hurricanes made 1st hand, but 7 trips to the area is nothing but a desperate man trying to improve his low poll ratings caused by failures of his job.
Some CON-servatives like linda_K say her President doesn't pay attention to polls. We all know that is nothing but a bunch of Bull Roar out of her mouth.
I hear CON-servative law makers suggest cuts in programs for the elderly,education,roads,etc to help pay for Hurricane damage. BUT SO FAR I HAVE NOT HEARD ONE CON-SERVATIVE LAW MAKER YET SAY THE TAX BREAKS TO THE RICH SHOULD BE CUT BACK TO HELP PAY FOR HURRICANE DAMAGE.
Even Linda_K and Karl Rove can't stop the damage this White House has brought upon itself with their words and photo ops.
I have taken several steps to conserve fuel but George Bush hasn't.
