Well, *obviously* New Orleans in Bush's fault!Follow

No. You claimed that was true, but never backed it up with any kind of factual information. Since the site I sourced specifically stated that under federal law Bush can't send in federal forces without the specific request from the governor of the state, and you've provided *zero* information to counter that, I'm going to stick with my original statement.

There may indeed be some new legal change allowing federal forces to be used domestically in the case of a foreign attack or some situation in which the local government is unable to act, but that's clearly *not* the case here. The governor of Louisiana was in control the entire time. She was not incapacitated. She was not rendered unable to fullfil her office. She actively chose not to allow federalization of the evacuation. That was her choice, and legally Bush has to abide by it.


So far every single site I've looked at agrees on this issue. If you have some evidence to back up your claim that Bush could have legally done otherwise, I'd love to see it...

Yeah. But neither you nor I are experts on constitutional law and its intepretation. Since Bush did not do that, we have to assume one of two things:

A) This was a situation underwhich he could legally have chosen to override the desires of the Governor of the state in question, but chose not to.

B) This was *not* a situation in which he could legally do that.


I'm leaning heavily towards "B" being the more correct situation. Given that Bush was still asking for Blanco to allow the evacuation to be federalized 4 days after the hurricane hit, we have to assume at that point he knew how much of a disaster things had become.

In any case, which do you find more "wrong"? The fact that Bush, when told by the governor that he could not federalize the evacuation did not override it via that clause in the Stafford Act? Or the fact that Blanco still refused to allow federalization in the first place?

The whole issue of whether Bush could have legally overidden the decision of the governor would have been totally avoided if she'd just signed a piece of paper in the first place. Again. If we're going to place blame, which gets it more? The person who refused to allow a normal legal process that could have saved lives? Or the person who didn't take a legally questionable action as a result to try to save lives?

In either case, we're left with the conclusion that the only way Bush could have "saved the day" would have been in spite of Governor Blanco, not because of her, or with her help. To me, that puts a heapload of blame for the result on her shoulders.

Lol. No. But I'm sure that the White House council is, as are a dozen or so policy aides, and another dozen staff members who actually give the assessments and recomendations for action to him.


I'm pretty sure there was at least one conversation that went something like this:

Bush: "Ok. Well, let's just send some national guard troops in there and start helping people out!".

Advisor: "No. We actually can't do that. We're bound by the Stafford Act, and can only provide the assistance that the governor requests".

Bush: "Crap! How can we get around that?"

Advisor: "We'd either need to be the subject of a foreign attack, or the government of Louisiana would have to be unable to act"

Bush: "Hmmm... Well, we can't cook up a foreign attack on such short notice! What will we do?"

Advisor: "Well... We could arrange for the assassination of Blanco and the lt Governor of Louisiana. That would do the trick, and we could have a wet team in place in less then 12 hours..."

Bush: "Damn. Such tough decisions. I'm not sure of what to do!"

Advisor: "Yes sir"

Bush: "We're going to get blamed for this either way, aren't we?"

Advisor: "Yup."

Because calling up Governor Blanco and saying "Hi, this is the president. Think ya wanna request Federal help?" would have been out of the question? Do you think she would have turned him down?


Sometimes you have your head so far up your ***, gbaji, it's a wonder you can type.

Seems pretty clear to me. I say Bush is not at fault because the things that failed were outside his power to change. You said they were within his power. While you may not have verbalized the argument, it's not invalid to assume that you are arguing that since Bush did have the power to fix things but didn't do so, that he was therefore at fault for failure to use those powers correctly.

At least in the context of the argument, that's the whole reason for making the point in the first place, right? To counter my argument, right?


I don't particularly care what *your* argument is Tricky. I'm defending *my* argument. So yeah. I'm going to attach my conclusions to my argument as I go along. And my conclusion is that Bush is not at fault for the Katrina disaster because he was not the one calling the shots in NO.

What is all this talk of the "government" should have done more? Why wasn't the government there to begin with? Nonsense.


The federal government should never be the first to repond to a natural desaster. In fact, emergency recovery is in its very simple form a cycle of sorts. First is prepair for the disaster, second is to react, third is to recuperate, and finally the last step is to extenuate. And in emergency response municipal and county authorities should be first response. Then the State government is to support the municipal and county authorities, and finally the Federal Government aids the State government.

Municipal and county authorities have ambulances, medical staff, police, fire departments, and so on. It is widely know that these services are not controlled by any other authority. The state has control of the National Guard. And finally the Federal government has its tools.

The first steps were a monumental failure. Local Government have known for quite some time of the impending destruction of the city of New Orleans if a hurricane the size of Katrina came to call. There was next to no preperation for this hurricane and the hurricane there after(Rita). Yet this monolithic proportioned failure has fallen short of the public eye. They knew it and turned away from the inevitability of this distaster.

It has been made abundantly clear that not only municipal and county authroities has clearly failed, but also the state government. There has been this haze to which this actually is. Getting the Federal goverment involved in state matters is a process and a very large one at that. It is NOT the federal governments job to jump onto everything that happens within the country. This process is called federalism. The Federal governments only concern is the states. The state's only concern is county governments, county government concernes itself with municipal needs, and municipal governments worry about its citizens. Without this, all branches would fall apart and eventually would be incapable of action. It would lead to all communities to depend of the federal government to all disasters, which is not right, nor is it practical. Sovereign states have the primary responsibility for emergency in their own respective legal power. In a disaster crisis to which the federal government does get involved its only duty is to coordinate and support.