This is from another site. If it's all true, and it all seems to make sense, then the democrats have proven themselves to be exactly what we thought they were.


I think all of Nagin’s pomp and posturing is going to bite him hard in the near future as the lies and distortions of his interviews are coming to light.

On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center took the unprecedented action of calling Nagin and Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of NO and they said they’d take it under consideration. This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68’ waves before it was destroyed.

President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act). Just before midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up. He was told that they didn’t think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet. After the President’s final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.

Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation. After a personal plea from the President Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting and authorizing federal action. In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President’s legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops – but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.

Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to NO for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships. Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city’s website was never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or coordinating into any planning – though the document implies that they were.

The suffering people of NO need to be asking some hard questions as do we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the multi-state mutual aid pack activation documents until Wednesday which further delayed the legal deployment of National Guard from adjoining states. Or maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should have commandeered 500 Greyhound busses to help him when according to his own emergency plan and documents he claimed to have over 500 busses at his disposal to use between the local school busses and the city transportation busses – but he never raised a finger to prepare them or activate them.

This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of thousands more suffering, but it’s certainly not a time for people to be pointing fingers and trying to find a bigger dog to blame for local corruption and incompetence. Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in the future.

What site?

Link please..

Need source and more details
but thanks for posting it....

Incredible, but it is still the Black-hating Bush's fault. Nagin could be broadcast live cooking meth on a bridge in NO and it would still be Bush's fault.

Oh yes a link please,  I have a great debate going on in another forum and I'd love to throw this quick and dirty one thier way.

So bump to the top.

tag for credibility

I'm skeptical of any article that doesn't even mention the Neo-Cons' Hurricane Machine.

DAMN!! Need link! Badly!

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Tag for source.

If this is true, it would explain why the administration is saying nothing while the dems scream bloody murder in front of every video feed they can find. They(the dems) are desperately trying to fend off responsibility and cover their own asses. They will look criminally incompetent if a senate investigation drags this kind of stuff out into the light of day.

Tag for linky

This matches what appears to have happened. But I'd like to see a source for this as well.

This has The Ring Of Truth about it (and everything that's mentioned should be documented if it did happen ).

Tag for sources.

Link please!

Here's a story with some info that matches

www.insidebayarea.com/ci_3001032

White House shifts blame
Administration points to state, local officials

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu, WASHINGTON POST

NEW ORLEANS Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.

President Bush authorized the dispatch of 7,200 active-duty ground forces to the area the first major commitment of regular ground troops in the crisis and the Pentagon announced an additional 10,000 National Guard troops will be sent to Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total Guard contingent to about 40,000.

Authorities reported progress in restoring order and electricity and repairing levees, as a hospital ship arrived and cruise ships were sent to provide temporary housing for victims. As Louisiana officials expressed confidence that they had begun to get a handle on the crisis, a dozen National Guard troops broke into applause late Saturday as Isaac Kelly, 81, the last person to be evacuated from the Superdome, boarded a school bus.

But there remained an overwhelming display of human misery on the streets of New Orleans, where the last 1,500 people were being evacuated from the Convention Center amid an overpowering odor of human waste and rotting garbage.

The evacuees, most of them black and poor, spoke of violence, anarchy and family members who died for lack of food, water and medical care.

About 42,000 people had been evacuated from the city by Saturday afternoon, with roughly the same number remaining, city officials said. Search-and-rescue efforts continued in flooded areas of the city, where an unknown number of people wait in their homes, on rooftops or in makeshift shelters.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the flooding 250,000 have been absorbed by Texas alone, and local radio reported that Baton Rouge will have doubled in population by Monday. Federal officials said they have begun to collect corpses but could not guess the total toll.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, D. Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move was comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request.

“Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

Bureaucracy blamed by feds

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify chains of command split among the president, Louisiana governor and New Orleans mayor. Louisiana did not reach out to a multistate mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

“The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,” White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. “The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana.”

Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims and hired

James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort. Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis “has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities,” he said. “The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable.”

In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was “because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.”

Chertoff planned to fly overnight to the New Orleans area to take charge of deploying expanded federal and military assets for several days, he said. Chertoff said he maintained “full confidence” in under secretary and FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, the federal officer in charge of the Katrina response.

Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that “the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans.”

Official says FEMA unprepared

New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas acknowledged that the city was surprised by the number of refugees left behind, but said FEMA should have been prepared to assist.

“Everybody shares the blame here,” said Thomas. “But when you talk about the mightiest government in the world, that's a ludicrous and lame excuse. You're FEMA, and you're the big dog. And you weren't prepared either.” 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 spokeswoman. Bush canceled a visit with Chinese President Hu Jintao that had been scheduled for Wednesday and made plans to return to the Gulf Coast on Monday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled visits to the region, as troops continue to pour in.

Top Bush administration officials met at the White House with African-American leaders amid criticism that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has neglected impoverished victims, many of them black.

Chertoff, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson, White House domestic policy adviser Claude Allen and Pentagon homeland security official Peter Verga met for two hours with NAACP President Bruce Gordon, National Urban League President Marc H. Morial, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and its current chairman, Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., who participated by phone.

“I think they wanted to make sure that the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Urban League and the NAACP knew that they were very sensitive to trying to make sure that things went right from here on out,” Cummings said, according to his spokeswoman, Devika Koppikar.

Tag. With supporting evidence, this could be a bombshell.

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More searching turned up this:

www.newshounds.us/2005/09/04/cavuto_guests_absolve_bush_of_all_blame_claim_his_advisors_tell_him_what_to_do.php

CAVUTO: Well, Jim Rogers, you've been arguing as someone from this area that the levees have always been a problem and always been a corrupt source of issue for politicians there. ROGERS: Neil. Neil. None of this had to happen. Most of this did not have to happen. Those levees have been there - the Levee Board in New Orleans in the past ten years has bought a casino, a private marina, a private plane. They have several hundred million dollars invested with their friends but they have not taken care of the levees. If somebody had protected those levees, New Orleans would not have flooded, so this is caused by local politicians and they should all resign. They're screaming at the President. They should be resigning. They brought it on themselves.

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pwned.

(Tag)  When the NWS gave warning Fri night, there were about 60 hrs until landfall.  Nagin made a mandatory evacuation order with about 20 hrs left.  But there was no real way to get the estimate 100,000 blighted people out in time.      

It would have taken a herculean, well coordinated effort to get all of the poor out, even if they wanted to go.  My understanding is that the city had a ridiculous plan to bus people out, that was completely and utterly ineffective.  It's so much easier to blame others for their suffering afterwards.    

Quoted: (Tag)  When the NWS gave warning Fri night, there were about 60 hrs until landfall.  Nagin made a mandatory evacuation order with about 20 hrs left.  But there was no real way to get the estimate 100,000 blighted people out in time.       It would have taken a herculean, well coordinated effort to get all of the poor out, even if they wanted to go.  My understanding is that the city had a ridiculous plan to bus people out, that was completely and utterly ineffective.  It's so much easier to blame others for their suffering afterwards.

The city apparently DID have a plan to bus people out, a plan that , with ~60hours, could have been very effective, given the number of buses avilable. What was not effective was the local government, which failed to implement anything other than an evacuation suggestion.

I've been avoiding the news because I'm sick of the constant reporter-induced hysteria.  At what point did the City of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana start busing people out of the danger zone?

Quoted: I've been avoiding the news because I'm sick of the constant reporter-induced hysteria.  At what point did the City of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana start busing people out of the danger zone?

They did not. A quick search around will show some pics of two hundred buses still sitting in the bus lot, now partially submerged.


Edit: After the incident occurred, they did. The plan and action should have occurred prior to the hurricane and flood, but did not.

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Quoted: Quoted: I've been avoiding the news because I'm sick of the constant reporter-induced hysteria.  At what point did the City of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana start busing people out of the danger zone? They did not. A quick search around will show some two hundred buses still sitting in the bus lot, now partially submerged.

So there was NO effort by the city or state to evacuate people.   I thought that there was at least some effort after the "mandatory evacuation" was announced?  That is UNSAT.

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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I've been avoiding the news because I'm sick of the constant reporter-induced hysteria.  At what point did the City of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana start busing people out of the danger zone? They did not. A quick search around will show some two hundred buses still sitting in the bus lot, now partially submerged. So there was NO effort by the city or state to evacuate people.   I thought that there was at least some effort after the "mandatory evacuation" was announced?  That is UNSAT.

I have yet to find anything suggesting otherwise, on the part of the local government.

I welcome proof to the contrary.

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Nagin's a dumbass. End of story.

Quoted: ...Nagin could be broadcast live cooking meth on a bridge in NO and it would still be Bush's fault.

AND get reelected.  I was younger, dumber and more idealistic when Marion Barry first got reelected.  Certainly opened my eyes about human nature and politics in general.

She should be put on trial for manslaughter and endahgering the public. She is an idiot and should have resigned immediately. The people of Louisiana should do some historical research to see what the Italians did to Mussolini after WW2.

Quoted: She should be put on trial for manslaughter and endahgering the public. She is an idiot and should have resigned immediately. The people of Louisiana should do some historical research to see what the Italians did to Mussolini after WW2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussolini  

He was killed April 28, 1945.

VE Day was May 8, 1945.

And it may not have been the Italians who did it, but British agents seeking purported documents embarassing to Churchill.  Interesting article.

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Vulcan94

Quoted: Tag Vulcan94

Vulcan, I just noticed your sig line.  PLEASE tell me that is a joke, because I cannot believe any homo sapiens actually would write something like that.

oops!

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Tag for more info

GM

tagged

Awaiting more facts, but I have no doubt that the account is correct.

Few people understand the pissing contests that go on in a situation like this when you have idiots at the state and local level. Especially idiots who are Bush haters and who think exactly like the DU retards. What it means is that they will protect their own interests and poll numbers at the expense of doing the sensible thing, and then when it all blows up in their face they will blame everyone else for the problem.

Few people understand that there are legal restrictions on what a president can do, and don't seem to understand that our system was built with cooperation in mind for times like these. When one side fails to cooperate, the whole thing breaks down.

I also knew from working in government that spending money on strengthening levees and preparing for disaster isn't NEARLY as sexy as spending it on other projects that generate revenue and get politician's names in the paper, or unless it is on fire. Thus if you want something done you either have to make it sexy or use arson to make it get done.

Apparently nobody worried about levee problems was able to get a controlled burn going...

All that stuff you see on TV about rivalries between government agencies isn't just fiction. There really IS a pissing match when something like this goes down. Remember the pissing match over the 9/11 investigation between the FAA and the FBI??

Government is, sadly, about fiefdoms and not about getting the job done, and as a result people spend more time trying to best the other guy than they do working together to get things accomplished in the field. It even happens in the military on battlefields.

Such is life.

Thus blaming Bush for everything is either done by the ignorant or the liar.

Quoted: If this is true, it would explain why the administration is saying nothing while the dems scream bloody murder in front of every video feed they can find. They(the dems) are desperately trying to fend off responsibility and cover their own asses. They will look criminally incompetent if a senate investigation drags this kind of stuff out into the light of day.

Sen Frist also was the first to call for Congressional Hearings. I think the term is "giving them just enough rope to hang themselves."

Quoted: Sen Frist also was the first to call for Congressional Hearings. I think the term is "giving them just enough rope to hang themselves."

Interesting, I did not know that.  This could get fun in coming months.