Tweet
OK, but what exactly did FEMA and DHS do wrong that they should have done better? So far, I haven’t heard any meaningful explanation of what the criticisms are.
Okay, I’ll start. Here’s your FEMA in action:
USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) was slated to leave its Baltimore port today to provide critically needed medical capabilities and hospital beds to the region. Initially, some 270 medical personnel, most of them from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., will operate the ship’s medical treatment facility, Military Sealift Command officials said.
Today? Today? They’ve known that Katrina was going to hit since last Saturday. Thousands of people are dead or dying, yet the hospital ship has been sitting idle in the Baltimore harbor all week, and was only dispatched TODAY (another hospital ship sits idle in San Diego — it’s scheduled to leave for NO on Sept. 7th, don’t ask me why).
And what is the DHS doing during all of this? Why, keeping the Red Cross OUT of NOLA:
Homeland Security (her term, not mine) told the Red Cross DO NOT enter New Orleans and says this still now. And why, you may ask? Not Security. Not worker safety. Not lack of access. It was because people would be drawn to the Red Cross food and they wouldn’t want to go to be evacuated. So I asked: “The people starving and dying at the convention center yesterday couldn’t get Red Cross food and water because they would be drawn to the food at the convention center, where they were, and not want to be evacuated from the convention center where no evacuations were going on or planned and all the while they are dying”.(snip)
Could it be they were saving the convention center rescue until Bush’s visit today? It certainly seems like it. Doesn’t it?
Yeah, that’s DHA and FEMA in action.
You’d think the Power Tools would eventually get tired about never, ever being right about anything and give up.
Intrepid little fuckers, aren’t they.
Update: For the sceptics, from the Red Cross’s own site:
The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
Lovely. Just lovely.
6 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
owner=only
I plead lethologica
I ran into some conservative yo-yo who told me that the problem was that they didn’t build the levees right in the first place….yeah and the American Revolution would have ended sooner if they’d owner sent the B-2s to bomb London….
Yep, it’s genocide.
To use an old Marine Corps expression, this whole administration is as fucked up as Hogan’s goat.
These bastards couldn’t throw a beer party in a brewery.
I really don’t want to believe it, but this is no coincidence. One of those truck drivers or Nat’l Guardsman has to be furious enough to talk publicly. They spent two days saying “we’ve called in troops” and “help is on the way.” And yet, no food or water. Until Bush arrives.
Will the masses fall for it this time? Not if I can help it, at least locally.
Don’t minimize (or miss) that giant glaring bit of conservative wisdom: People would be drawn to the Red Cross food and wouldn’t want to be evacuated.
Conservatives know in their hearts that people will live in shit with dead bodies piling up around them just to get a free meal. This is the same reasoning that led Trent Lott to declare back in ‘92 that we “should tax unemployment benefits to make being unemployed less attractive.”
Yes, Republicans truly, truly believe that. And they really do think that way. Any wonder why the government is completely dysfunctional when they’re in charge?