Quote:
Originally posted by BigCityStripper
Why don't you read the article I posted above about the city and school buses available to Nagin that he didn't use. Click on the link to the AP photo of a parking lot full of empty buses. Every seat on those buses represents one person that could have been evacuated alive if Nagin would have done HIS job.
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While Nagin probably could have used buses to get people out and it may have saved thousands of lives, I don't agree that the responsibility rests solely with him. There have been SCORES of natural disasters that the elected officials did not have control over. I think your comments over simplify the fact that in less than 24 hours the storm path CHANGED. Initially there was not an expectation that they would take as direct a hit as they ultimately did. He followed protocol by telling those near the water to leave. So given the initial track of the storm any evacuation efforts would have been the same no matter what-people inland would have potentially expected some water, but certainly not the amount that New O took in.
Secondly, I think it is really interesting how easily Americans can be led to ignore other really important things going on around them. While we blindly argue about New Orleans, has anyone noticed that no one is really talking about Mississippi? If you haven't seen any of those pictures they basically show houses collapsed like cardboard boxes and toothpicks-pretty much the entire state. I feel like we've been given New Orleans to fight and haggle over and second guess decisions to distract our attention away from the fact that there is probably no one left in Miss. I wonder if that has anything to do with the responsibility of the Bush administration, FEMA, Homeland Security, anyone in the government?
My point basically is that I think that this issue was bigger than buses. The government failed these people and really I think it has everything to do with class and race.