Like Iraq, Hurricane Katrina will show up repeatedly on this list. Its first appearance: Bush’s immediate response. Well, not immediate, of course — that involved partying and having birthday cake…but that shows up in the single digits.
No, this is Bush’s delayed response, the one where he woke up one day to find his advisers were demanding he do something, anything, to stop appearing to be the world’s biggest douchebag. As that simple act was beyond his ability, he decided to do this:
Because nothing says “Message: I Care” like looking out a window at a destroyed city when you’re flying 15,000 feet over it at 450 miles per hour. Heckuva job, Bushie! With hands-on involvement like that, I can’t believe that you didn’t actually come up with a decent response to the Katrina disaster, you know, ever.
it still astounds me that some people thought he did a good job…i mean…the things he got away with! ugh, get him outta here!
Actually, I think this is probably worse than the immediate response you’re planning to put in the single digits. Yes, the immediate response was awful and worthy of being in the top twenty, but by definition the immediate response was made with less, and less reliable, information and with less time to think things through.
This – the Flyover – is what he did after he heard all of the reports from various agencies, saw the pictures on television, and had an evening to mull it over. The immediate response was just *WRONG*. The Flyover was *INEXCUSABLE*.
Admittedly, by this time it was too late late to do most of what he should have. Where he REALLY screwed up Katrina was years earlier, by mostly dismantling FEMA and shifting most of their remaining resources to focus almost exclusively on terrorism response, ignoring the proven foresight of the report from FEMA in early 2001 that listed the three potentially worst catastrophies for the U.S.: 1) A terror attack in New York, 2) A category 5 hurricane in New Orleans, and 3) An earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area.
[gulp] I hope rebuilding emergency response is part of Obama’s stimulus package.
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