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Originally posted by: Mavdog
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Originally posted by: kg_veteran
If you're just interested in making the factual observation that perhaps the National Guard's response time (not the local government's response time, the state of Louisiana's response time, any other federal agency's response time, or the response time of any private relief organizations) to Katrina was slowed by one day, then that's fine. I'll concede that. It is a possibility.
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I'll go one further and say it is not a possibility, it's been proven and admitted to by multiple people involved. Clearly the procedures that were put into place when the Homeland Security dept. was established need to be examined and altered. it's a good time to mention that without the exposure our failures in LA received we wouldn't be focusing on the solutions.
you and I agree that the burden of this delay needn't be placed at the feet of Bush, who has put people into place who are getting the job done.
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It's equally possible that it wasn't slowed down at all.
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no, at this point it's a fact. even today in the WSJ they treat it as a fact.
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Wow lot's of claims and precisous few facts to back them up. And since when has the wall street journal been the final arbitrator of what is and is not a fact? Don't remember seeing that little item in the Constitution. Really all you have is an opinion or at best a collection of opinions. But you've shown precious little to back those opinions up. Like a General who said "agruably" which has as one of it's defnitions "still unresolved". I notice the conspicious lack of links both in your response and in my google searches to the "multiple people involved" who admitted and proved that response time was slowed by one day or more because of troops being in Iraq. Yeah some said that it was "too slow", some said it was about standard for hurricane responses, and some said it was an incredibly outstanding job of quick response. Seems like we have a clash of opinions, not exactly a proven fact in your favor.
BTW what was the standard response time to hurricanes by the federal government over the last say 15 years when we haven't had a considerable amount of National Guard deployed over seas? Seems that little fact would be pertinent to proving that the current response was slow by a day. After all we have to have something to comepare it too other than it took more than one day for all needed National Guard to get there. I haven't seen it in any of the scores of articles I've read on Katrina, except the one below.
But here's dissenting opinion expressed in a Pittsburg paper that says it far better than I can:
Jack Kelly: No shame
The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed
Sunday, September 11, 2005
It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.
"Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.
But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.
Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:
"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."
For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.
Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.
So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.
I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:
More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.
The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.
Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.
Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought:
"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.
"The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.
"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.
"No amount of yelling, crying and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above."
"You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere," van Steenwyk said.
Guardsmen need to receive mobilization orders; report to their armories; draw equipment; receive orders and convoy to the disaster area. Guardsmen driving down from Pennsylvania or Navy ships sailing from Norfolk can't be on the scene immediately.
Relief efforts must be planned. Other than prepositioning supplies near the area likely to be afflicted (which was done quite efficiently), this cannot be done until the hurricane has struck and a damage assessment can be made. There must be a route reconnaissance to determine if roads are open, and bridges along the way can bear the weight of heavily laden trucks.
And federal troops and Guardsmen from other states cannot be sent to a disaster area until their presence has been requested by the governors of the afflicted states.
Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.
The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.
A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?
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