NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Republican presidential candidate John McCain took stock of still-hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans on Thursday and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed at the nearest Air Force base, drawing a sharp contrast to President Bush’s handling of the tragedy.
McCain called the response to Hurricane Katrina “a perfect storm” of mismanagement by federal, state and local governments.
The Arizona senator walked a few blocks of the hard-hit Lower 9th Ward, passing tidy rebuilt stucco houses standing next to abandoned structures, their facades still spray-painted with the markings of rescue workers who went door to door nearly three years ago searching for bodies. Government-issued trailers still dot the neighborhood. McCain said his teenage daughter Bridget had been there with a volunteer youth group a few weeks ago to help in the recovery.
“Never again, never again, will a disaster of this nature be handled in the disgraceful way it was handled,” McCain declared, a pledged he repeated over and over during the day.
Full Story Here:
McCain to New Orleans: Never again
There is no doubt in my mind that Bush and his administration handled the New Orleans disaster very badly, there was much that wasn’t done that should have been and there remains much to be done, but at this late stage of the game it’s pretty much not an emergency anymore…
I know that some folks are going to think I’m off on another ‘bash Bush’ tirade, and maybe I am, but this is the Gospel truth, the response to Katrina in south Louisiana, and especially the New Orleans area, was slowed because of the Louisiana Army National Guard was deployed to Iraq at the time…
The 256th BCT, with a compliment of 3,500 troops, was sitting in Kuwait City when Katrina hit their homes and families, and all they could do was watch on television, pray and worry as they prepared their equipment for the return trip to Louisiana, the equipment they were allowed to keep that is, the 256th went to Iraq as an armored unit, they were pretty much stripped of their armor and returned as a light infantry brigade…
Be that as it may, the National Guard is being used in Iraq, and yes, they are a part of the army and can be used in combat operations, and I have no problem with them being used in that capacity, if the situation is so serious that it merits that usage, but what about the folks back home??
What do they do in the event of a natural disaster or civil insurrection?? The handling of those events is the primary job of our National Guard troops, perhaps our president needs to consider expanding the regular army forces a bit and then re-tasking Guard units back to their homes, where they belong…
The 256th couldn’t have stopped Katrina from ravaging New Orleans but they could have been there for an immediate response if they hadn’t been tasked otherwise, taking care of the duties that our regular army should have been looking after…
Maybe the next president will consider these hard, cold facts, lives were lost, here in America, because the Guard wasn’t there to respond, American citizens died because their 1st responders were in Iraq and Kuwait…
In a disaster situation, even though Guard units from other states, as well as regular army troops DO respond, that response is seriously delayed because of the distance that has to be traveled to arrive in the AO and the time lost as supplies are brought in from other areas…
McCain says he would do a better job, he says that he would respond in person…
And do what Sir?? If the Guard troops aren’t there to respond almost as soon as the wind stops, what does it matter how soon you’re there??
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Here are a few things about Katrina that never made national news. Some folks I knew at Barksdale were involved with this.
The Pentagon began tracking the storm when it was still just a number in the ocean on Aug. 23, some five days before landfall in Buras, La. As the storm approached, senior Pentagon officials told staff to conduct an inventory of resources available should it grow into a severe hurricane. Their template for these plans was the assistance DoD provided Florida last year for its four hurricanes.
And a week earlier than this, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an executive order delegating hurricane decision authority to the head of the Northern Command, Adm. Timothy J. Keating. Four days later, as the tropical storm soon to be named Katrina gathered force, Adm. Keating acted on that order.
Before the hurricane arrived in New Orleans, Adm. Keating approved the use of the bases in Meridien, Miss., and Barksdale, La., to position emergency meals and some medical equipment; eventually the number of emergency-use bases grew to six. And before landfall, Adm. Keating sent military officers to Mississippi and Louisiana to set up traditional coordination with their counterparts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As well, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered the movement of ships into the Gulf.
By the Pentagon’s account, it carried out these preparations without any formal Katrina-related request from FEMA or other authorities. The personnel behind the massive military effort now on display in Louisiana–airlift evacuation, medical, supply, and the National Guard–was on alert a week before the hurricane. According to Assistant Secretary McHale, “The U.S. military has never deployed a larger, better-resourced civil support capability so rapidly in the history of our country
Here’s some of what Joint Task Force Katrina accomplished.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/jtf-katrina.htm
Bob, please don’t think I am knocking the military response, it WAS there, but the overall was seriously lacking and IMMEDIATE response was slow at best… From FEMA…
When the troops got there it was ‘game on’ but there were some serious delays, and there didn’t have to be…
But here’s the thing we ALL need to realize: it is NOT FEMA’s job to be any sort of “first responder.” FEMA wasn’t created that way, and that’s not how ICS works; trust me, my cop ass has been kicked by each and every stupid ICS class. Yes, it was wonderful that the National Guard assisted as they did, and that DoD performed as they did, only to their credit. The REAL disgrace, the REAL disgust should rest where we all KNOW it should: with the locals on EVERY level.
In an emergency event you DON’T need, for example, to sift out only those with a specific class of license in order to move that entire flooded lot of yellow buses we’ve all seen from the classic photo. You simply have to be sensical, logical and not an arrogant melanin-enriched “got to his job only because he’s a fuckhead” like Ray Nig — er, I mean, Nagin. Nagin is squarely where the blame should rest (you know, he of the “I’ll just move my entire family to Houston until this shit blows over like my constituents CAN’T”), as well as Lousiana’s bimbette Demorat governor Kathleen Blanco.
If McCain says he’ll respond faster, well good for him. But it’s NOT his job to even REMOTELY assume the role of a first responder. When fires savaged the fuck out of Fornicalia last year (as they do EVERY year) we didn’t whine because the Feddies weren’t asshole-to-elbow with our CDF fireMEN. We just sucked it up and WORKED OUR ASSES OFF.
Precisely what the coddled and TRAINED darker citizens of NOLA simply, generally, refused to do.
Which is why NOLA is STILL a piece of shit.
BZ
The primary responsibility for both the pre- and post-Katrina response lay on the shoulders of state and local governments. At both levels, they failed the citizens of New Orleans and the rest of the state damaged by the storm.
Conveniently for the Mayor and the Governor, both Democrats, an unpopular Republican President occupied the White House, and the press made it super easy to shift the blame.
Could the feds have done a better job? You bet. But the federal government is not supposed to be our daddy or our nanny.
Fred, I know you would never knock the military. The whole Katrina thing was a debacle, from local government to the Federal level. McCain’s statement is what gets my goat. It’s easy for him to say how he would have handled things. After all, the Monday Morning Quarterback always has the winning game plan for the Superbowl. He can issue all the orders he wants and throw all the money in the treasury but until you get “boots on the ground”, nothing is going to happen.
Ya see guys, what I see here is a Catch-22, the 256th IS Louisiana’s 1st line of defense, they are La Army National Guard, but they were on federal orders and deployed to Iraq, a place I feel the Guard shouldn’t be, we’re not in a battle like we were in WWII where every able bodied man was needed, it’s Iraq, and our Guard troops are being sent, leaving our states vulnerable, and for that I DO blame Bush, his DoD and their shitty war planning ability…
Yeah, the responsibility does fall to the state, but if your state Guard is gone to Iraq on a federal ordered deployment, then by God the feds owe you some serious support…
Now I don’t think they owe you that support in perpetuity but they owe you an immediate response…
This is a very interesting discussion. The one thing nobody has mentioned is “personal responsibility”. These people knew the storm was coming but did nothing to save themselves. The depended upon the government to take care of everything. No self organized evacuation, relief efforts, food distribution, or rescue. They just waited for others to do it for them.
One thing we have to remember and that’s Posse Comitatus. The Federal Government can’t send in troops until the governor requests them. From what I wrote above, we can see the Federal Troops were ready and in position. But still, you don’t send in troops while the bombs are falling or the winds are still blowing.
Old NOLA tradition Bob, Hurricane Party… Only idiots attend, and none of the asshats ever thought NOLA would be gutted like it was…
You’re right, personal responsibility didn’t play into this for MANY of NOLA’s residents, but that’s also a character flaw of NOLA, the ‘brothers’ have had the Dems of La take care of them for so long, it’s just an inbred response…
And Posse Comitatus is exactly why the Guard needs to be home, taking care of the home front, avoids a ton of potential problems and improves the response time tremendously…
The entire state of Loiusiana only has 3500 Nat’l Gauardsmen?
It just seems kinda,,,odd,,,that with all the othe catastrophies that happened under FEMAs watch- that the way they did everything (the same as always) in N’awlins was wrong.
Somehow or other all the other hurricaines didn’t have the right demographics to be a complete clusterf*ck like N’awlins?
How come the rest of Louisiana wasn’t a complete disaster like a certain toilet bowl was?
New Orleans is below sea level and surrounded by water, Mississippi river on one side and Lake Pontchartrain on the other, the levies gave way, and NOLA went under water, and it WILL happen again…
Katrina was a Cat 5 that rapidly decelerated, that was why the inland damage wasn’t worse but the Cat 5 was devastating to the immediate coastal areas…
I still believe that the overwhelming majority of the blame lies with the two asshats at the local and state level. The fact that the idiots that infest…I mean inhabit, “nawlins” reelected one of those asshats, speaks volumes about those idiots.
I’m not sure why McCain chose to kick this dead horse, except that a certain voting block doesn’t view it as dead, but he did, and it will emit the same foul stench as it did a couple years back.
The city in the hole by the sea will continue to be a sore spot for this administration until this administration is no more. Perhaps they do deserve some wrath for doing the job of the local and state government, and failing to so so immediately. Perhaps that’s an indication of McCain’s intent? To do the job of the local and state governments?
The frightening thing about the Katrina catastrophe vis a vis New Orleans is that a large portion of New Orleans residents sat on their backsides waiting for “government” to help them (Nagan and Blanco) in the face of this storm, and the local and state officials sat on their backsides waiting for the feds to bail them out. Remember all those school buses supposedly to be used in such emergencies that sat in their parking lots and were ruined by the storm?
The degree to which Americans now depend upon government to do for them things they can and should do for themselves is disturbing. Where is that independent, self-reliant, can-do attitude that carved this nation out of the wilderness only a few hundred years ago?
Pioneer spirit?? In NOLA?? Surely you jest??
Those cretins barely get up and go to work, all they care about is a PARTY…
Did you miss my comment about Hurricane Party?? That is why so many died in Katrina, they stayed to party and got a hell of a lot more than they expected…
John, I’ll tell you exactly why McLame kicked this dead horse, he’s pandering for the black Dem vote of NOLA, McLame is as liberal a wannabe Dem as the real Dems are, but that’s OK, no one listened when some of us tried to tell em that Bush was an idiot, and yeah, he was better than Kerry or Gore, that was the really sad part…
If Americans don’t wake up, and I mean damned soon, and vote in an actual CONSERVATIVE, you might as well stay on Oki, because there won’t be an America to come home to soon…
McCain is pandering, as usual. Sort of like his so-called pro gun position… Yeah, right …
Okay, again, and yes I am getting tired of repeating myself. By law, FEMA cannot take action without the request for it by the highest local authority. Believe it or not, the National Guard, and regular military bear no such restrictions. The idiot NOLA Mayor and the whining Governor waited, oh what? Three days beyond when it was in fact recommended to request aid?
It didn’t help one bit that the Guard was off doing what the hell regular Army units should have been doing.
BZ? Just got to love Incident Command, and how it gets screwed up in nearly every situation beyond your basic structure fire.
I really thought that when it came to speeches George W. Bush was the worse…..
Well, I was wrong.