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Catastrophes

  • Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    7 comments

    The raison d’etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to insure America’s oil supply. On both counts the Bush administration has failed catastrophically.
    Bush’s single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one of America’s most historic cities (…)

  • Challenges to Bush leadership mount as poll numbers slide
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Brian Knowlton
    President George W. Bush faced increasingly bitter political challenges Sunday from local and state officials in the battered Gulf Coast as he struggled to show mastery over a disaster that his administration now acknowledges almost surely claimed thousands of lives and had yet to bare its full, ugly toll. A Louisiana senator, Mary Landrieu, said she was so angry about federal failures and second-guessing that if she heard any more criticism, even from the president, (…)

  • For Bush, Next Moves Are Key to Rest of Term
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Dan Balz
    The first week of September 2005 likely will be remembered as one of the most troubled weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency, a time in which natural disaster combined with bureaucratic bungling in ways that threatened to inundate an administration already on the defensive.
    Even before Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast last Monday, Bush was buffeted by public dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq and consumer outrage over rising gasoline prices. But the federal (…)

  • Bush returns to Gulf Coast to view damage
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    President Bush planned a return to the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast Monday for a third look at Katrina’s effect with visits to Baton Rouge, and Poplarville, Miss.
    But none of his activities - including a stream of Cabinet secretaries and other high-level federal officials to the area and on the airwaves Sunday - have quieted the complaints that Washington moved too slowly in the storm’s aftermath.
    Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, just south of New Orleans, broke down on NBC’s (…)

  • A Failure of Leadership : "Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead"
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    35 comments

    by BOB HERBERT
    Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president’s failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.
    The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately (…)

  • The Two Americas
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Marjorie Cohn
    Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
    What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community (…)

  • At the very peril of the United States, Bush appropriated $ billions for War!
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    by Mary MacElveen
    Never in my wildest nightmares did I ever think that I would hear the word refugee used in relation to the citizens of the United States of America. But, thanks to Hurricane Katrina, our worst nightmare has come true.
    Some may say "I cannot believe this is happening to us" and my reply to them is similar situations have happened across the globe for a very long time and it stands to reason and given the stupidity of this government, our time would come.
    My heart (…)

  • Budget cuts delayed New Orleans flood control work By Andy Sullivan
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Andy Sullivan
    Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.
    The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation’s waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully (…)

  • Pattern Emerges in Katrina Lack of Response Stories
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    19 comments

    Beyond Incompetence Reading the news after the Katrina Hurricane
    and the lack-of-response disaster,
    a pattern began to emerge.
    links to full articles all located on this page, with links to the source for two reasons: 1. easy to email 2. archived because some sources delete articles
    Airboaters stalled by FEMA 500 Florida airboat pilots have volunteered to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, transport relief workers and ferry supplies. But they aren’t (…)

  • While Bush fiddles, New Orleans dies
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    This is a review of the performance of George W. Bush in tight times in this nation. It might explain the single solitary most catastrophic collapse of American government in all of our times. Mark ye well. This was the week when we turned a major American city into Haiti, and racism put its hand out and started to choke a nation, and it may not let go.
    With the water coming from the sky and the bottom of the sea, driving with such ferocity that a major American city, New Orleans, followed (…)