Incompetence, Lying and the Betrayal of a Nation: It's Deja Vu All Over Again -- And More Death and Chaos from "The Master of Disaster," George W. Bush
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Our thoughts are with the victims of Hurricane Katrina -- and with those who suffered needlessly because of the incompetence of the Bush Administration. Not one FEMA or National Guard or Military shipment came to the rescue of thousands of people at the New Orleans Convention Center for four days, where some died of thirst and lack of medical attention. Not one helicopter, not one truckload of food, not one medic.
The head of FEMA also said that he didn't know there were people stranded at the Superdome until Thursday, even though this was broadcast widely and covered in the newspapers all week.
What does this say about Bush's wasteful use of billions of our tax dollars allegedly on "homeland security." This could have been a terrorist attack. The Busheviks weren't prepared at all, even after days of warning about the storm. With a terrorist attack, they wouldn't have even seen it coming, so their incompetence would have been even worse in not responding, which is hard to imagine.
This is inexcusable. If Bush is a man of God, God must have his head in his hands today, cursing his doltish, feckless self-anointed follower. People have been dying in American streets because the American government can't get water or food to them, even though reporters could get into the city.
What does this say about how we must be conducting the war in Iraq, if we can't even get any water or food to 10,000 people over four days? And they were in a dry area of New Orleans. We know the New Orleans Convention Center. We jogged past it just two weeks ago. There are plenty of areas large enough for helicopters to land, but people died as Bush played guitar and mouthed platitudes -- and nothing was done to relieve them.
If they were all blonde white women, you know this wouldn't have happened. But maybe it would have, because this administration is utterly, irredeemably incompetent. They exist solely as a PR machine with a partisan agenda of enriching their supporters and dismantling the American government as we know it.
Anyone who continues to allow this man to continue to remain in power in his state of bumbling, arrogant delusion betrays America. If he were a black female Democrat, he would have been impeached for allowing 9/11 to happen, or for any number of lies, transgressions and failures since then
And he lies with such brazen abandonment that it defies belief. He told Diane Sawyer that no one could have predicted the levees might have burst, when his administration cut back funding to prevent just such an occurrence. Why? In order to give a tax break to the rich and to spend billions of dollars on a failed war in Iraq. The Bush administration had been warned countless times that the levees were vulnerable. And shouldn't the Bush administration have also considered that they were potential terrorist targets?
Either Bush is a pathological liar or so ignorant that he shouldn't be a stock clerk at a Wal-Mart, let alone President.
His lie of ignorance about the levees was an eerie repetition of the excuse that Condoleezza Rice used after 9/11 when asked why the Bush administration didn't prevent the attacks. She mendaciously claimed that they were never warned of or thought about hijacked planes being flown into buildings, despite a trail of government and journalistic reports indicating that Al-Qaeda was considering just such an action.
Furthermore, BuzzFlash challenged the mainstream media to ask Ms. Rice why she and Bush ignored an August 2001 report that was entitled with the words that Al-Qaeda was planning hijackings in the United States. Because whatever Ms. Rice's dubious claim of not knowing about widely covered plans for Al-Qaeda to hijack planes and fly them into buildings, she and Bush were specifically warned about plans for the general hijacking of planes by terrorists about a month before 9/11 and -- as we have editorialized again and again on BuzzFlash -- they did nothing, nada, zilch, to prevent such hijackings. In fact, Bush went once again on a month-long vacation to Crawford
So here's the issue about 9/11 in a nutshell that no one ever held Rice and Bush accountable for. They did nothing to prevent terrorist hijackings, even though they were warned about them prior to September 11th. If they had successfully tried to prevent hijackings, they would have prevented the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings. It is that simple, because they were hijackings too. But they did nothing, nothing at all.
And now again, we had Bush on vacation, as if he was just an observer, like we are, to a disaster about which he took no action to remedy or prevent the worst case scenario. In fact, he cut funding for protecting the people of New Orleans, and then, even though warned about Hurricane Katrina, did nothing to prepare for dealing with the aftermath of saving lives. Countless people have died not only from the storm, but from negligence in helping them in the aftermath of the storm.
This man should not be in the White House. He should be in jail for crimes committed against the citizens of America.
Only the black caucus, once again, appears to rise to the occasion of doing something rare in America nowadays: holding Bush accountable for his failed lack of leadership and breakdown in protecting the basic security of American citizens.
The white Democratic senatorial candidates (including Biden and Clinton) wallow in their timidity and fear of assuming the mantle of leadership. They mistake supporting Bush's manufactured image of national security leadership with supporting the actuality of protecting the American people, which Bush fails to do at every inept step he takes.
If a Democrat can't stand up for trying to really protect the American public from terrorist attacks and the after-effects of disasters than what do they offer that is different than the incompetence of Bush? If Joe Biden really believes that the Iraq war is a worthy cause, then he is selling the security interests of the United States short, as is Hillary Clinton.
The acquiescence of the Democratic leadership to the conventional wisdom that they have to appear to be "tough" on national security is terminally flawed. To be tough on national security and to truly protect Americans requires a lambasting of the failures of the Bush Administration's foreign policies -- including the nightmare of the Iraq War -- and a corrupt, incestuous, partisan, ineffective Department of Homeland Security. We aren't talking about politics as usual; we are talking about protecting the American people, really protecting them, and not just playing a political game.
Talking tough is not enough, Mr. Biden. You have to talk smart and act smart and level with the American public. You have to redefine the debate to bring it back to the truth. You have to be impassioned about our Constitution and protecting our democracy and our lives, not politically calculating.
And you can't get sidetracked by the "moral values" sucker punch. Is chronically lying to Americans moral? Is letting thousands of people die in an unnecessary war moral? Is slandering men and women who patriotically stand up for America and tell the truth, is that moral? Is leading an assault on government services to the citizens and communities of America moral? Is enriching the already fabulously wealthy at the expense of the working class, middle class, and poor moral?
Is allowing people to die of thirst on the streets of New Orleans moral?
A famous Jewish sage, Hillel, told us, “It’s not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but just because you can’t necessarily finish it is not an excuse for you not to even make the attempt." Wishy-washy Democrats who fear public opinion, instead of trying to inform and lead the public, never even start the task.
For the sake of the future of the United States of America, democracy and our lives, they must start to make the attempt.
Or we are all doomed to be like the helpless citizens of New Orleans, left adrift for days by a ship of fools governing the ship of state.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL