Reply #460: Sept 13: debunking the "Truth about NO" chain letter

[mom cat]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4758136

Mugsy (283 posts) Tue Sep-13-05 06:06 PM
Original message
Debunking the "Truth of the N. O. hurricane" chain letter. PLEASE READ!
Edited on Tue Sep-13-05 06:28 PM by Mugsy

Perhaps you've received it yourself from a Conservative friend or concerned Liberal friend. It is an Op/Ed attributed to a "Merritt Is, reporter" citing "the facts" about everything Bush did right and Nagin/Blanco did wrong. It is chock full of errors, falsehoods and outright lies... and not one single coroborating link. And good luck figuring out just who the mysterious "Merritt Island reporter" is, because no one seems to have a name or even what rag he writes for.

I just received the aforementioned "li-atribe" and spent all morning reseaching the facts, all supported with links... unlike the author.

Please read, bump and pass this important response along. It took a LOT of work on my part: (be kind and bump. Thanks.)
----------------------------------------------------------

(original Op-Ed can be found here.)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/katrina/nagin.asp

> Subject: Truth of the N. O. hurricane?

I think someone is playing fast & loose with "the truth" here. Let's examine some of these "facts"... all backed up with links to the actual proof (unlike the original article):


> This chain of events sounds credible. I am familiar with the Posse Comitatus Act.
> The Posse Comitatus act specificlaly limits the use of federal troops by the Federal Government
> in domestic issues. So that portion of this story is correct. The President cannot
> arbitraily just send Federal troops into new Orleans and into Louisiana.
> They have to be invited in by the Governor of the State.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding this. Too bad no one actually bothers to actually look the law up (link):

"In a nutshell, this act bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act."


> Truth of the N. O. hurricane?
>
> 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.

August 28th at 10AM, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco gave a scheduled press conference (link) to announce *mandatory evacuations* in which she stated,

"I want to reiterate what the mayor has said. This is a very dangerous time. Just before we walked into this room, President Bush called and told me to share with all of you that he is very concerned about the citizens. He is concerned about the impact that this hurricane would have on our people. And he asked me to please ensure that there would be a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."

So the suggestion that "mandatory evacuations" were only "under consideration" and prompted only by a call from the President, is a flat lie.


> This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves before it was destroyed.

Funny how, when someone is spinning something, *everything* must be exaggerated:

“The worker said the last transmission was a 35-foot wave, after that we lost contact,” Ballard said." (link)

The buoy was not "destroyed", it merely "lost contact" during the storm... which is not unusual (an interesting fun-fact, if you add the word "destroyed" to a Goolgle search of "Katrina NOAA buoy", every result is a link to this very same feux-fact op-ed).

And the time of the call, "late on August 27th", is the night before Governor Blanco and N.O. Mayor Nagin order a press conference to announce "mandatory evacuations" at 10AM the very next morning. In fact, Governor Blanco had already called for a "State of Emergency" on August 26th before any call from Max Mayfield or President Bush.


> President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators

With a Category-5 hurricane now baring down on Louisiana and Mississippi, President Bush, still on his "ranch" in Crawford Texas, is busy finding new ways to avoid answering distraught mother Cindy Sheehan's simple question: "For what noble cause did my son die for in Iraq?" (link)


> 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).

First off, it's called the "Insurrection Act", not "Insurgency Act" (which should already clue you in as to the accuracy of the claims made).

Second, the "Insurrection Act", a new law created under the Bush Administration, is for the express purpose of: shutting down any "unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States". Translation, if President Bush was doing this before the evacuation, he was *expecting* there to be chaos and rebellion in the aftermath of Katrina ('cause hey, that's what poor people do, right?). Makes one wonder why the Federal government's response was so weak and slow in coming if he already believed chaos was certain to ensue.

I just can't imagine how Dubya might have come to the conclusion that poor people are prone to violence (link) (audio).


> 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.

In fact, it was Blanco who asked President Bush on August 27th to declare a State of Emergency, not the other way around. (link)

And as noted above, a "State of Emergency" had already been issued the day before.


> He was told that they didn't think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet.

Total BS. Can't link to something that never happened.


> 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.

I've tried every keyword combination I can think of and a Google News search turns up NOTHING citing governor Blanco rejecting ANY offer by President Bush.


> 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.

As already noted, both Blanco and Nagin have already declared emergencies before any contact by President Bush.

There are just too many ways to phrase "received a second call" to verify with a search, but of all the ways I tried, I could find no report of a second call by President Bush pleading with Blanco or Nagin to take action.


> After a personal call from the President, Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation,

We're repeating ourselves now.


> It is also reported 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

As already noted above, it's the "Insurrection Act", not the "Insurgency Act", and it isn't a law specifically to overrule states in times of emergency, it's a way for the Federal Government to crush any state that "gets uppity".


> 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.

Just a little hyperbole here, but in fact this is (for the most part) true. Huh, who'da thunk it? No one ever called Louisiana "blameless" in this.

But the point needs to be made that it was the N.O. "levee board" that chose to redirect those funds, not the mayor or governor's office. And the board spent $2.8 million developing "a proposal to build a 4-mile-long island on Lake Pontchartrain with beaches, camping areas, and possibly hotels, restaurants, and an amusement park" (link). I can find no indication that the project began to take place before the storm. Nor can I find out how much the Federal Government earmarked for the N.O. Levee System over the past decade to neither confirm nor deny that "over half" was diverted to the project, though if true, $400 million over 10 years is a piddling pathetic amount to protect one of the largest cities and the second largest port in the United States.

In fact, FactCheck.org (Dick Cheney's favorite site) confirms:

"In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year…forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze."

(Special note, to find another source for this accusation, I was forced to *exclude* the words "Thrown in" in my search, or else sift through 500 word-for-word copies of this very same accusation.)


> 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

Already disproven above.


> The suffering people of N.O. 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

I am having difficulty figuring this one out.
The "multi-state mutual aid" Act (EMAC) is an agreement between states to assist one-another in times of emergency. Most states proudly declare when they are a participant in this agreement, and Louisiana is among them. From what I can discern from the state of Virginia's website, "activation" of the EMAC (Emergency Mandatory Assistance Compact) is automatic upon declaring a State of Emergency, which Governor Blanco did (Federally) on the 27th (locally on the 26th).


> 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

This is the now infamous photo of 550 buses underwater in N.O.:



A few issues need to be noted about these buses:

1. Most photos of the 550 buses underwater in N.O. are from the NOISD bus depot. At least half of these buses weren't even working to begin with (I'm still working to confirm this with regards to N.O., though other cities report an average 50-55% of their bus fleets operational at any one time). That takes us to ~275 functional buses (just imagine how long it would have taken to run around, trying each one of them to see if they worked or not).
2. Now you need to commandeer 275 bus drivers, private citizens with families of their own to take care of. Good luck.
3. Over 1,000 air-conditioned “Greyhound/Trailways/Metro” buses were commandeered and shuttled ~40,000 people to safety (108 of them arrived here in Houston - photos).
4. Just because a bus starts up, doesn't mean it is in any condition to embark on an impromptu 348 mile road trip (the distance from N.O. to Houston).
5. Each school bus is capable of carrying 50 "school-age-sized" children comfortably, or 50 adults "uncomfortably". That means you could have transported AT MOST 13,500 adults +/- 500. There were 100,000 people trapped in N.O.. Even if you dumped all 13,500 passengers out after 250 miles (apx. Lafayette, still beneath the hurricane) and made the five/six hour trip back for a second load (and running on fumes by the time you arrived, so you'd spent another 20 hours refueling 275 buses), that would still leave another 70,000 people not evacuated).


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

Interesting note: the first complaint I can find about "finger pointing" is by the Bush Administration when Press Secretary Scott "Scotty" McClellan said on September 1st:

"This is not a time for finger-pointing or playing politics,"

I wonder why the White House was suddenly concerned about people assigning blame?


> 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

Finally, something we can agree upon.

-----------------------------------------
o "A disaster like Katrina is just what a president needs to anchor his second term and give him relevance and popularity far into his tenure." - Conservative columnist Dick Morris, Sept 7, 2005 (Death and Disaster... bad for Americans, political gold for George Bush.)

o "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" - former House Speaker Newt Gingrich....read

o "9/11, Iraq, Katrina... for the next three years, whenever I hear the words "Bush, August and vacation" in the same sentence, my first thought will be "thousands of Americans are about to die". With over ten thousand Americans now dead as a direct result of this President's incompetence, if you are still a supporter of this President, "Partisan" in your rear window. You're now a Zealot." - Me, Tom D'Ambrosio, speaking to Conservatives on September 1st, 2005.

o Louisiana's junior Senator, Republican David Vitter, gave the Bush administration "an F grade" for its handling of the crisis. Senator Chuck Hagel, a leading contender for his party's nomination to succeed Mr Bush, said, "There must be some accountability." - Sept. 4, 2005 "The Independent" UK newspaper.

o "she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night!" - Jefferson Parish President Aaron Brousard in tears on Meet the Press describing how a son reassured his mother day after day that help was coming.

o "Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting." - Conservative columnist David Brooks in a NY Times Op-Ed. Sept 4, 2005.

o "The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty." - from an Op-Ed appearing in the New Hampshire Manchester Union-Leader, home to one of the most staunchly conservative editorial pages in the nation.

o "As with the planes of 9/11, New Orleans' burst levees had been anticipated, just not by the administration....Then again, W famously doesn't read newspapers, so I guess his ignorance is well-earned. As is his place in hell." - from CaliBlogger, a Conservative message board site.

o "For throughout the four years since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been telling us that his number one No. 1 priority is protecting the nation against a WMD terrorist attack and, if efforts to protect us fail, preparing to respond with full force. Last week, a major American city, New Orleans, fell victim to the natural version of such an attack. The effects of Hurricane Katrina ­ widespread physical destruction and contamination rendering an entire city virtually uninhabitable ­ are virtually the same as the effects that might result from an attack by terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction. So, Mr. President, where is "the plan"?" - Houston Chronicle Op-Ed, Sept 4, 2005