New Orleans: How Exactly Did Bush Fuck Up?

The hints are coming in on the exact nature of the SOP Administration cock-ups that are at the very least contributing to the misery and depth of disaster in New Orleans.

A) Cutting natural disaster funding through FEMA - NPR reported this morning that the reaction in DC even now is that the 15$-1 ratio on natural disaster versus terrorism spending will not change, a direct result of Bush policy from pre-9/11. This lead very specifically to reductions in funding for Army Corps projects in the area- I heard a LA congressman say that Admin budget keep zeroing natural disaster funding OUT. Rep. Hastert's characterization that N.O. may not be worth rebuilding is not encouraging if it reflects the planning, yet a N.O. flood was a widely known and well-established hazard. We can set aside the larger loss of wetlands point until later.

B) Lack of Decisive Leadership. The photo of Bush fucking up a G-chord says a lot - other than a brief warning from W before blathering on about the Iraq constiution on Sunday morning, I did not sense any urgent push from the top to get ready beforehand, which, if I recall, is sort of why you have a President. That press conference felt like what it was - a pro-forma acknowledgement of a problem to try to avoid criticism later. The slowness of the federal response seems rather amazing, and people are rightly asking why Fort. Bragg and other nearby army and navy units were not prepositioned to move in when it became obvious that a Camille-like disaster was brewing. It was just TODAY, for example, that the Hospital ship COMFORT, a major asset for just such a disaster, left Boston, a full week after the coming problem was obvious.

C) I saw the FEMA director on CNN say that they didn't send food into the Superdome until it was requested Thursday- what happened to four years of catastrophy planning? Or was that only for terrorism against Republican suburbs?

I did actually post a plea here before the storm to federalize and move in with military trucks, vehicle seizures and mandatory evacuation - and took it off, thinking that it was unnecessary, that even this adminstration would figure it out and dumping on them beforehand would be unhelpful.

Sigh. More awkward questions later.