BLAME BUSH!

Wow- how the media and others in the blogosphere have raged on and on how the problem with the response to Hurricane Katrina lies at the feet of the current president, with even the astute rapper Kanye West saying on national TV that "Bush hates black people." Well, you can read my previous post to hear my points about the racism spin to this disaster, so I won't go into more detail on that. However, there needs to be some points made on who is to blame:

1. There was a period of time that elapsed from the end of the hurricane to the time the flooding began. Want a pictorial view of this? Go to http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=r9nmta5.b147fdut&Uy=hbb8p1&Ux=1 Be prepared to sit for a while as there are more than 100 pictures with commentary describing what is happening and when, giving the viewer an understanding of the timeline of events. Since there was a period of time, it appeared that New Orleans was going to survive relatively unscathed- yes, there was damage to structures and trees and such, but there was NO FLOODING. There was no reason to get excited about any rescue operation because there was no need for one! Sure, there was no power, but people in Mississippi had no power for over a week and lo and behold they are still alive. The problem came when the levees broke.

2. Suddenly you had a different situation arise than was previously anticipated. The evacuation and subsequent housing of those that couldn't evacuate to the Superdome were meant for protection from the Hurricane itself, not from onrushing floodwater from broken levees. In fact, the initial floodwater levels in New Orleans after the passing of the storm were less than what was expected in the city. This presented something the city was not prepared for, and the city knew it. In fact, they had tried for years to get upgrades done to the levees, but government bureaucracy at the local, state, and federal level has kept this from happening, quite possibly with the procrastinator attitude of "we'll deal with it tomorrow". Well, the problem made itself evident as "tomorrow" became today.

These problems were present long before Bush was elected, he was just the unlucky one sitting in the Oval Office when it came time to pay the piper for the sins of his presidential predecessors as well as those local and state officials that also did nothing. If the levees had not broken, this certainly would not have been the crisis it is today and we would be moving onto the latest and greatest sensationalized story the media could promote, and the ticking time bomb of the levees would still be sitting there counting down and waiting for the next hurricane to blow through. The man has been the sitting president for 2 of the greatest disasters on American soil in the last 50 years, and they are all his fault? I don't think so.