trevster2k said:
How come we aren't seeing stories of people helping people like we saw during the tsunami. There are some heartwarming stories but they are outnumbered by stuff like a sniper,WTF?!?
For starters, I watched the Stone Phillips program on NBC tonight. Some firefighters in Pass Christian, Mississippi were commenting that htey had not yet gotten any ferderal aid and were asking for it, but they showed the goods sent from Alabama (which was also hit) and Florida and were very appreciative and said it was overwhelming. A refugee center in Gonzales, Louisiana didn't have to ask for food for its evacuees because local businesses and churches were donating it. Here in Birmingham, Alabama, local school systems are enrolling students who have evacuated to this area, WITHOUT the typical paperwork. Even while Mobile was still being drained from its floods, Alabama sent relief crews into Mississippi and Florida. Governor Jeb Bush of Florida diverted gasoline shipments that were meant for the Florida Panhandle, a popular Labor Day weekend destination, and sent it instead to Mississippi and Louisiana where the refineries are down. Neonatal ICU patients (babies) are being transported to Birmingham and Texas hospitals and cared for here.
On another note, I had an AIM conversation with Dread the other night that may have contributed to this "politicization" conflict in here. Neither I nor Dread nor, probably, anyone else in this forum, think that people shouldn't criticize the government. In fact, I think criticism is especially effective when we see that things aren't being done properly in a crisis situation. But it seemed to me that the people who are usually criticising Bush for myriad other reasons were seizing an opportunity to go specifically after him for the aftermath (if not the lack of prevention of) this crisis.
I saw someone post asking "why" military helicopters weren't being used to rescue people, when I had already seen, by Wednesday, helicopters from nearly every branch of the military rescuing people. I posted photos of several of them. No response to my confirmation that military choppers were indeed being used. Was someone making a subtle point that we had "no" military helicopters to use in rescue operations since "all" of them were deployed to Iraq, which, obviously, "all" of us disagree with US presence there? Since then, I've seen it mentioned several times how many Mississippi and Louisiana national guard troops are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan when they should be in Mississippi and Louisiana. Are we using this hurricane to bolster the anti-war movement?
Regarding the tardy, inadequate resopnse of the federal agencies, I do agree that it was unacceptable. However, I agree with Dread that it is puzzling as to why the city of New Orleans or the state of Louisiana didn't utilize the school buses to evacuees who had no means of leaving the city. I'm not saying to drive them to the Super Dome or Convention Center; I'm talking about on Saturday and Sunday sending them to Houston, Birmingham, Shreveport or Little Rock. Why not? It's just as appropriate to finger point and blame the local governments for not procuring a better evacuation as it is to blame the feds for not dealing appropriately with a storm/flood situation unlike any expreineced in our history, and on top of that partially in a city below sea level situated between a system of levves that were originally built around swamp land in the 1700s.
Also, how do any of us know that any other leader, be it John Kerry, Ralph Nade, Al Gore, John McCain, would have responded any more effectively? Do we just assume that because we agree with those candidates on other issues?
~U2Alabama