Obama for President,Too! ( Archived) (831)

Sir, I saw Katrina the night before it hit. I am pilot. I know weather and have studied it. I have never seen storm cells rising 70K to 85K in the air. Average thunderstorm is 45k to 60K. Getting the picture?

You saw the photos from New Orleans after the storm hit. The damage to instructure went several 100 miles inland. Ever try to get a convoy of trucks across downed bridges and flooded areas? Easier said than done.

Sure you could order your people fly into sever weather and our people would go....but with this kind of sever weather....like a 'prefect storm' kind of weather like this. You are going to lose some them doing so. They choose to sit and wait it out. I cannot fault them for doing so. Had they done elsewise, they would have been losing people and air assets when they needed them the most.

Sure they admitted a slow response. And people were fired. I am saying giving the strength of the storm and the conditions as it passed and after. With the assets they had available. Was the slow response becaue they had little road net for 150 miles around New Oraleans and 100+ mps winds for 300 miles around it? Be fair, sir. They did pretty well.

Were I do fault them. Was after our Florida 4 hurricane summer the year prior. We saw significant infrastructure damage here. I wrote a report on it, suggesting doing hurricane relief from the ocean side via pre deployed vessels.

The people that got fired rejected this report on providing hurricane
relief from via ship. After Katrina passed they eventually scrambled a
naval flotilla from Newport News that took 7 day to get there. Made a US Navy Admiral head of the relief effort. That all took time. Had they pre deployed prior, as the report recommended the time to providing relief to New Orleans would have been cut to 2, maybe 3 days after the storm passed from the Gulf side via sea. I fully admit, 7 days without water and other such emergency relief...is way to long.

Just like many in the east don't understand your CA wild fires well. Unless you have seen hurricanes, specially in the class of Katrina they are hard to imagine.

I think and hope that we learned from Katrina. I think that we have.
Predeployment of relief supplies for hurricanes with the strength of Katrina is vital and life saving. And better evacuations of the impact area needed to be done. Neither the Dem Governor or city mayor used thier ability to evacuate New Orleans prior to the storm hitting. They had school buses sitting in flooded parking lots. They let the citizens of New Orlean sit there with a massive storm coming down on them. And did not do a manatory evacuation. Both political/leadership sides made mistakes...no Dem were fired that I know of.

Dude, he has had a real war to fight following 9/11. Some might say he expanded in into Iraq without the need. But Afganistan and GWOT still had to be fought.

Presidential staffs and cabinets are only so large, only as good as those inside them, only so many hours in the day. Yes, even for a Super Power. Have things been missed at home? Yes. The cause that they were? Much of the higher levels of gov't got into these areas of Homeland Security and the GWOT is my thinking.

Post 9/11, they created an entire new gov't agency and interwove existing agencies into it to make the Department of Homeland Security. For a large government that is a massive undertaking. Alot of top level SES executive time went into the effort for it. With out 9/11, that top level SES executive time would have gone into inner country problems.jmo

Like all war time commanders, Pres. Bush has made mistakes. Conflict is a fluid thing and the enemy gets a vote, as Tommy Franks says.
But I go back to one of my first post here.....several months ago......asking how many of us would want to sit in the Oval Office this last 8 years? No CSer said they wanted the position. Including me.

Now we have three that want to. God speed and God bless em all.
Also God speed and God bless President Bush. Many might not like this last statement. But why be vindictive? He is on his last year.
Has made decisions you and me, cannot imagine. And has been our President and Commander in Chief for the last 7 years. Let those that
hate America and what America stands for take that position of vindictiveness. Be American.....or be at least like Dude.......that wants to see a postive change.

It will wash in the coming history books, written about this time in history. The Oliver Stones of the future can make thier movies of it. The thing is we lived it and had front row seats to it. The question for each here today, is did we occassionally get out those seats and try to make it better for all?

I really like this part of your post. There's a loud ring of truth to it. I know I would not want to have that job.

I'll backtrack and check, but I think Mayor and Governor were supposed to make an official request for assistance. I'll have to research that to be totally accurate though.

We should have looked at 9/11 as a domestic issue....probably?

Now be nice Tom. You know that neither the mayor or governor had the skills to type up a request; or even pick up a cell phone.

This is a serious thread, please don't turn it into a comedy session

Thank YOu, Thank You, Thank You Sparky 55. Trurer words were never spoken. I am thankful that an intelligent man has entered the discussion.