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Originally Posted by bradclark1
I'm not blaming him for their failings. I'm blaming him for the failings of the federal goverment. Your reasoning is that until the govenor calls for federal aid the goverment should sit on it's butt. I don't think so. Thats not even an excuse. I'll say this again. These various agencies to include Homeland Security and the military are paid a lot of money to do their jobs. Part of that is to think ahead, to plan, coordinate, and delegate. To be preemptive not reactive. Case in point is the prior planning given to Rita.
Maybe it's my military background and knowledge of operations that to me makes what should have happened plain as day. I don't know. But I expect more than knee jerk reactions.
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The President did take the step of declaring the region a disaster area before the hurricane struck, without waiting for Louisiana to ask for it. First time that's ever been done i believe, and on somewhat shaky legal ground too, but there is only so much the Feds can do by law without the state requesting it. As for mobilizing the military in particular, you know that the Federal government can't use troops for domestic law enforcement as that would be a clear violation of the Posse Comitus act.
Now you mention Rita as a case in point, but 99% of the preparation for that emergency was done by the state. If it illustrates anything it demonstrates the difference between a state that has it's act together and one that does not.
Don't get me wrong, the system we have for evacuating large areas and caring for 100's of thousands of refugees can certainly use a rethink, but the problems in New Orleans in particular were due to the levees failing and not the hurricane itself. If you want to assign blame for that you need to look much further back than the Bush administration.