I was giving Chertoff some room until I say this:
Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ?New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.? Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse. It was on Tuesday that the levee ? may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday ? that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city. I think that second catastrophe really caught everybody by surprise.
From 2:15 Monday on the Time-Picayune breaking news
New Orleans, 9th Ward, 2 p.m.
Wes McDermott, from the office of emergency preparedness in New Orleans, said officials have fielded at least 100 calls from people in distress in the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans.
People report they are waiting on roofs and clinging to trees, he said. But McDermott said the city cannot send rescue crews out until the wind drops below 50 mph.
Angela Chalk, a lieutenant with the community emergency response team in New Orleans, said her niece, Brandi Hyde, is one of those people stranded and awaiting rescue. She said her niece is stranded on a roof of a three-story apartment building on Bundy Road, along with other tenants.
Meanwhile, City Hall confirmed a breach of the levee along the 17th Street Canal at Bellaire Drive, allowing water to spill into Lakeview.
What’s even more bizarre is that much of the Mayor’s information was coming from FEMA flights to survey damage if you listen to his Monday night interview.
I knew about the levee breach before Michael Chertoff.
Honore wasn’t too good on his feet in an interview (CNN?) earlier today. He said they were prepared, had everything ready to go, but the storm threatend FL(?) GA(?!) AL MS and LA, so it was just an impossibly big area.
I like what I saw on TV yesterday with Honore taking charge of troops and telling them to put their “goddam weapons down!” Don’t think he’s a good guy to put out there covering Dr. Death’s ass.
“Mike” Chertoff and Mike Brown should be put on trial.
I think we all knew about things before Chertoff.
Von Rummelfeld would be another good one to put on trial. Why the hell he didn’t have the Navy on alert Friday or Saturday is simply shameful.
This administration will never own up to any mistakes. We’ve seen it in how they handled the 9/11 commission, we’ve seen it in Iraq, we even saw the President hem and haw when asked during a press conference if he’s made any mistakes in office. And it’s about to get a whole lot worse:
White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage
“In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove’s tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats.”
Even it a time of critical need, this White House can’t see beyond the politics of self preservation. It’s nauseating.
I also knewq about the levee breach before Chertoff.
Did I mention that I was in freaking ITALY at the time?
Wonkette has a post linked to on Atrios that shows that the Newseum has over 400 frontpages of News Papers archived from Tuesday morning but not one of them reads “New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.”
Chertoff was just making shit up again.
I’m all for Michael Brown, the FEMA director, getting fired. Heading an Arabian horse organization doesn’t qualify anyone for this job. He’s been thru a few disasters, but they obviously haven’t provided him with the necessary leadership skills. There have been too many confusing procedures in place. It seems that no one person was in charge.
This morning Pres. Bush wanted to change that in LA. He wanted to “relieve” the gov. of her responsibilities & put federal authorities in charge. He didn’t even tell her he scheduled another visit. He seems to give more consideration to the MS GOP governor than the LA Dem governor.
Honore in many ways is the “hero” of New Orleans in terms of public faces.
I see nothing wrong with what he said in terms of National Guard preparedness. I’m sure they were as prepared as possible under the circumstances. The trouble is that whoever pulls the trigger sending in the Guard was too slow and too slow to ramp up the call up- problems further up the food chain than Honore. This isn’t a story of failures of leaders on the ground- this is about the failures of higher levels. The weeping of the president of Jefferson Parrish about bureaucracy failing is about dead on.
If I hold anyone near blameless in this its the National Guard and other private components of the disaster response. The problem is whoever is supposed to be pulling these together, coordinating and in general directing from above.