- Stuff happens.
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- And when you combine limited government with incompetent
government, lethal stuff happens.
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- America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy,
death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered
infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally
negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
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- W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it
wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated
the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.
-
- Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday
and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city"
of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out
of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International
Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what
I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy
of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped
on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
-
- Why does this self-styled "can do" president
always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.
-
- Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted
to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered
to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
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- Who on earth could have known that an American invasion
of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and
possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar
reports.
-
- Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking
levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read
the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
-
- In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief
for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It
appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle
homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we
pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we
are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
for us."
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- Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in
Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are
in Iraq.
-
- Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the
Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood
programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40
million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled
highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for
a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
-
- Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials
practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods
and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response
to Katrina if they had not prepared.
-
- Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA
- a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian
Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were
15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in
the New Orleans Convention Center.
-
- Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president
hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck
of a job."
-
- It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner
circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping
at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before
bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine
- lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack
of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make
this administration implode.
-
- When the president and vice president rashly shook off
our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built
on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world
in American ideals.
-
- When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery
and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and
black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while
700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they
shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
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- Who are we if we can't take care of our own?
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- http://www.nytimes.com/2005
- /09/03/opinion/03dowd.html
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