Posted by Sarah on 9/10/2005, 5:51 pm, in reply to "Re: Celine Dion on Larry King's "live" Katrina "help" show."
Apparently 70% of the American people agree with her, because Bush's approval rating has "mysteriously" dropped to only in the low 30's.
A lot of people screwed up in the reaction to this disaster. Local officials and state officials for not being prepared for something like this, engineers for building a levy system that would hold only for a category 3 hurricane (obviously that was not going to cut it), relief agencies, and the federal government. Yes, the federal government. They are the highest leadership. They should be there to assist when there is not enough other assistance. And they were incredibly slow. Not that they could have easily done things much differently. They are simply undermanned and extremely limited on resources, because most of our troops/equipment is not here..its in Iraq. But when something like this happens and there is a delayed response, blame is going to get thrown around, and the people/person at the top is naturally going to be the one to get most of the blame. It goes with the territory.
Having said this, the head of FEMA and the head of the Dept of Homeland Security are totally unqualified for their jobs. They have no idea how to plan or react to something like this. Reacting to situations like this is not a question for politicians and lawyers. Its for engineers, and people who actually know how to solve real life problems.
But, Bush, as the leader of this nation, is going to get most of the blame, and, should be held responsible in some part, for being the one who chose the leaders for these organizations. But Bush is no more qualified to handle a disaster like this than were the people in charge of those organizations. The only difference is, he had the power to decide who was going to be in charge of them, and chose to nominate based on politics rather than based on skill for the job.
