I just about fell down laughing when I heard the description from Moltenthought's blog...I've emphasized it below:
Not only that: just because a single reporter crew can be there right after the storm hits does not mean that those 3,000,000 MRE's can be right behind them. Airdrops? They're B.S. Airdrops are for PR purposes and never make a significant dent when you're talking about hundreds of thousands displaced. Wolf Blitzer? Go screw yourself. Shep Smith? Go screw yourself too. My time in the gulf let me see first hand what "expert reporting" is. We'd be much better off if everyone formed their own opinion about everything, instead of listening to assclowns on television, constantly aggrandizing the extreme side of everything, whether it be ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative.Jack Kelly: No shame
The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed
Sunday, September 11, 2005
It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.
"Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.
But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.
Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:
"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."
For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.
Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.
So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.
I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:
More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.
Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought:
"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.
"The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.
"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.
"No amount of yelling, crying and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above."
"You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere," van Steenwyk said.
Guardsmen need to receive mobilization orders; report to their armories; draw equipment; receive orders and convoy to the disaster area. Guardsmen driving down from Pennsylvania or Navy ships sailing from Norfolk can't be on the scene immediately.
Relief efforts must be planned. Other than prepositioning supplies near the area likely to be afflicted (which was done quite efficiently), this cannot be done until the hurricane has struck and a damage assessment can be made. There must be a route reconnaissance to determine if roads are open, and bridges along the way can bear the weight of heavily laden trucks.
And federal troops and Guardsmen from other states cannot be sent to a disaster area until their presence has been requested by the governors of the afflicted states.
Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.
The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.
A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?
Okay, so what's most likely to have happened in this case? Bottom line, nobody conceived that this particular scenario could occur--by that, I mean the tragedy in New Orleans...because we are talking about one city in an area the size of England that was affected. Now, I know the meteorologists were screaming bloody murder about this hurricane--hold on. Recent memory showed New Orleans to have dodged so many bullets. We didn't see this coming because we didn't want to believe it would happen and, boy, it sure would suck if it did. The result? The failure on all levels of authority. From the individual idiot who stayed in the path of the hurricane all the way up to the President. Yes, congress included.
"Oh, but woulda, shoulda, coulda," you say? Bite me.
If I knew an 8.0 earthquake was coming to San Diego in the next few days, good luck finding me anywhere close to here. I'm not counting on the government to save my ass if it's under a ton of sheetrock and metal. I worked for the government. There's a reason why there's a saying "good enough for government work".
Those people who didn't get out? Well, thank God for free will, and thank this country's founders for allowing us to keep it. The cost of freedom? Eternal vigilance...in this case, vigilance for one's own self. Mayor Nagin didn't send the school buses to pick everyone up. Yeah? You're going to voluntarily put your life into the hands of someone else? I'm not. It's self-reliance, people.
I don't pay attention to the blathering left, grasping on every political straw, armchair Bush-hating quarterbacks gaining fits of their self-proclaimed brilliant thoughts between puffs on the blunt. Black "leaders" (*cough*hypocrites*cough*) screaming racism. You want me to care more after hearing "leaders" say that?
Blah blah blah blah blah. Yup. Don't care anymore.
So, how 'bout them Niners?
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