Documents Highlight Bush-Blanco Standoff

[FormerRepublican]

"Shortly after noon on Aug. 31, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter (R) delivered a message that stunned aides to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D), who were frantically managing the catastrophe that began two days earlier when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

White House senior adviser Karl Rove wanted it conveyed that he understood that Blanco was requesting that President Bush federalize the evacuation of New Orleans. The governor should explore legal options to impose martial law "or as close as we can get," Vitter quoted Rove as saying, according to handwritten notes by Terry Ryder, Blanco's executive counsel.

Thus began what one aide called a "full-court press" to compel the first-term governor to yield control of her state National Guard -- a legal, political and personal campaign by White House staff that failed three days later when Blanco rejected the administration's terms, 10 minutes before Bush was to announce them in a Rose Garden news conference, the governor's aides said.

The standoff, illuminated among more than 100,000 pages of documents released Friday by Blanco in response to requests by Senate and House investigators, marks perhaps the clearest single conflict between U.S. and Louisiana officials in the bungled response to New Orleans's surrender to floodwaters and chaos."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/04/AR2005120400963.html

Bush, Rove, et al are pigs of the highest order. I hope they burn in hell for this fiasco.

[NanceGreggs]

1. You know the BU$SCO philosophy ...

"We kill 'em over here, so we don't have to be content with just killing 'em over there."

[Auntie Bush]

3. Yeah! Kill'em here and kill'em there, hell, kill'em everywhere!

That's the bush motto and a good bumper sticker.

[jobycom]

2. "an unnecessary change intended to make Bush look decisive."

A Blanco aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the people around Bush were trying to maneuver the governor into an unnecessary change intended to make Bush look decisive.

"It was an overwhelming natural disaster. The federal government has an agency that exists for purposes of coming to the rescue of localities in a natural disaster, and that organization did not live up to what it was designed for or promised to," the aide said. Referring to Bush aides, he said, "It was time to recover from the fiasco, and take a win wherever you could, legitimate or not."

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Hell is not hot enough for these filthy Republican dogs.

[NanceGreggs]

4. ".. intended to make Bush look decisive."

Well, there you have it in a nutshell -- the entire 'Smoke & Mirrors Administration'.

Someone should point out to the BushBaby (and his supporters) that a real president doesn't need to made to 'look' decisive -- a REAL president IS DECISIVE!

[BenDavid]

5. Yes, and the democrats in LA.

should make it clear that their newly elected Senator Vitter was the water boy for the administration. From what I have gathered and read on this subject, and pardon my crude words, "he fucked the people of LA.".