Katrina: basic facts and timelines

Bush spin of history already in full rotation

Shoot, nothing could be the fault of Bush. Here is a bit of the result of this spin I received in an email message today. It comes from a reactionary I know who shall remain nameless:

FYI the Huricane devisted [sic] over 90,000 square miles. Lets put that into perspective. There are 63,000 troops in the area, put one in each square mile and what do you have??? alot of area with no help in it yet. To request that the president quit over an act of nature is well..... your fucking off the wall. Put your money were your cheese dick mouth is...

1-800-HelpNow

To this I replied:

You basically miss the entire argument I make for Bush's lack of honor and why he should resign. Did you even actually read it? Clearly, nowhere does it argue that an act of nature should chase the president out of office -- it's for the stuff in his control that honor demands his resignation.

Read those refs. I give. This is a story of grievous presidential indifference, ignorance, and failure of leadership on the issues involved in real security. Okay, perspective --if there are only 63,000 troops, there needs to be 630,000 or more. The initial response was slow and too small in everyone's estimation, even in that of our own Republican senators. Maybe the thing will be gotten control of, but again, in the estimation of every sane observer, it didn't have to be as bad as it is if leadership in the face of voluminous warning -- both in the long term and in the immediate pre- and post-storm days -- had been different.

The act of nature was foreseeable, as you can find out by reading the links. The government itself has studied the issues for years, but the administration's response has been to cut funding and send the Louisiana Guard along with 1/2 of its equipment to Iraq -- a crime of staggering proportions as much against international law as it is against America's real security. That's impeachable. But I prefer to appeal to the president's own conception of honor. As I suspect, he doesn't have any.

Also in response, I asked that these extremely important and disturbing pre-Katrina facts from a Wall Street Journal report and discussed in a piece on Media Matters be considered:

The Journal article also noted the concerns voiced by Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard a month before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In an August 1 interview with a New Orleans TV station, Schneider had worried that the National Guard equipment transferred to Iraq -- including high-water vehicles -- would be needed at home if a natural disaster struck:

``When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot [of] equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem.

``The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission,' said Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider with the LA National Guard.

``Col. Schneider says the state has enough equipment to get by, and if Louisiana were to get hit by a major hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have all agreed to help.''

According to a September 4 Washington Post article, the three neighboring states cited by Schneider were also hit by Katrina and therefore were too "overwhelmed" to provide such resources to Louisiana:

``State officials had planned to turn to neighboring states for help with troops, transportation and equipment in a major hurricane. But in Katrina's case, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were also overwhelmed, said Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokesman.''

Would all that stuff come in handy now? (See also the Phyllis Bennis interview from today's Democracy Now! on war-depleted disaster aid.)

There is much, much more just in the basic timeline record, and comparison with other US disaster responses -- particularly in Florida during the election year of 2004. Randi Rhodes on Air America has an excellent batch of links today. The extreme overpayments in the saturation response to those Florida hurricanes, particularly Frances, was not in many cases even related to hurricane damage!

Hurricane Frances hit South Florida Labor Day weekend [2004], 100 miles north of Miami-Dade County, but Sun-Sentinel reporters found that the federal government approved $28 million in storm claims there for new furniture and clothes and thousands of new televisions microwaves, refrigerators and other appliances. The Federal Emergency Management Agency paid for new cars, dental bills and a funeral even though the Medical Examiner recorded no deaths from Frances. In an ongoing series of reports, the newspaper also found FEMA inspectors were given only cursory training and attributed damage to tornadoes - there were none recorded in the county - and in six instances listed “ice/snow’’ as the cause. The reports have prompted calls for investigations by federal and state officials and the beginnings of an inquiry by the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

Before the administration's rotating machine chops up all of history on this many-fold disaster, I implore readers to keep a firm grasp of what really happened and who knew what and when by reading

1. A timeline of government response to Hurricane Katrina;

2. Timeline of Hurricane Katrina from Wikipedia; and

3. Hurricane Katrina timeline