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Banned
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Originally Posted by Aladdin Sane
It becomes clearer by the day that the local and state governments in Louisianna are mainly responsible for the delayed help in the aftermath of Katrina..........
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Sounds amazingly siimilar to Rove's latest "OP", Alladiin Sane.......
NY TIMES will make the following unavailable in the next few days, so forgive me for posting all of it. Just making the point that you all seem to repeat the same message, at the same co-ordinated time.....every time.....
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http://http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0...al/05bush.html
September 5, 2005
White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.
The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett. It began late last week after Congressional Republicans called White House officials to register alarm about what they saw as a feeble response by Mr. Bush to the hurricane, according to Republican Congressional aides.
As a result, Americans watching television coverage of the disaster this weekend began to see, amid the destruction and suffering, some of the most prominent members of the administration - Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense; and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state - touring storm-damaged communities.
Mr. Bush is to return to Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday; his first visit, on Friday, left some Republicans cringing, in part because the president had little contact with residents left homeless.
Republicans said the administration's effort to stanch the damage had been helped by the fact that convoys of troops and supplies had begun to arrive by the time the administration officials turned up. All of those developments were covered closely on television.
In many ways, the unfolding public relations campaign reflects the style Mr. Rove has brought to the political campaigns he has run for Mr. Bush. For example, administration officials who went on television on Sunday were instructed to avoid getting drawn into exchanges about the problems of the past week, and to turn the discussion to what the government is doing now.
"We will have time to go back and do an after-action report, but the time right now is to look at what the enormous tasks ahead are," Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, said on "Meet the Press" on NBC.
One Republican with knowledge of the effort said that Mr. Rove had told administration officials not to respond to Democratic attacks on Mr. Bush's handling of the hurricane in the belief that the president was in a weak moment and that the administration should not appear to be seen now as being blatantly political. As with others in the party, this Republican would discuss the deliberations only on condition of anonymity because of keen White House sensitivity about how the administration and its strategy would be perceived.
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.
"The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials."
That line of argument was echoed throughout the day, in harsher language, by Republicans reflecting the White House line.
In interviews, these Republicans said that the normally nimble White House political operation had fallen short in part because the president and his aides were scattered outside Washington on vacation, leaving no one obviously in charge at a time of great disruption. Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush were in Texas, while Vice President Dick Cheney was at his Wyoming ranch.
Mr. Bush's communications director, Nicolle Devenish, was married this weekend in Greece, and a number of Mr. Bush's political advisers - including Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman - attended the wedding.
Ms. Rice did not return to Washington until Thursday, after she was spotted at a Broadway show and shopping for shoes, an image that Republicans said buttressed the notion of a White House unconcerned with tragedy.
These officials said that Mr. Bush and his political aides rapidly changed course in what they acknowledged was a belated realization of the situation's political ramifications. As is common when this White House confronts a serious problem, management was quickly taken over by Mr. Rove and a group of associates including Mr. Bartlett. Neither man responded to requests for comment.
White House advisers said that Mr. Bush expressed alarm after his return to Washington from the Gulf Coast.
One senior White House official said that Mr. Bush appeared at a senior staff meeting in the Situation Room on Friday and called the results on the ground "unacceptable." At the encouragement of Mr. Bartlett, officials said, he repeated the comment later in the Rose Garden, the start of this campaign.
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And many still don't have the perspective that Reagan was an "B" movie actor, delivering his lines....not a brilliant leader and statesman, as he was so carefully and thoroughly portrayed.
You can follow exposure of Rove's newest "OP".....smear Louisiana's political leaders, to prop up Bush's shakey rep......here:
Quote:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509080001
O'Reilly falsely accused La. governor of not requesting more National Guard troops
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco "failed to ask for more [National Guard] troops from the feds, knowing she only had about 6,000 to control a city of 1.3 million" and that "[i]t was not until Wednesday, August 31st, three days after the storm hit, that Blanco admitted she didn't have enough security in the city." But according to Department of Defense officials, Blanco and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour had requested additional Guard personnel before the storm hit.
As Gen. Russel Honoré, commander of the Department of Defense's (DoD) Joint Task Force Katrina, stated in a September 1 briefing, the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi had requested additional assistance from the federal government "as the hurricane was approaching," beginning with a request on August 26 that DoD command centers be set up in their states. And by August 28, Mississippi and Louisiana were collaborating with the National Guard Bureau to have additional security forces sent in..........
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Quote:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509070004
News outlets repeated faulty administration claim that deployment of troops to Iraq did not affect Katrina relief effort
......But all of these news outlets entirely ignored recent comments from military officials that call into question the Defense Department's broad denials. A September 6 Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) highlighted the federal government's "delayed understanding of the scope of the damage last week and its initial slowness in mounting rescues and bringing food and water to stricken citizens." The article listed six problems that had hampered federal relief efforts, including a "military stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which left commanders near New Orleans reluctant to commit some active-duty units at nearby Fort Polk, La., because they were in the midst of preparing for an Afghan deployment this winter."
The Journal went on to report that a "senior Army official" had conceded that Fort Polk, a five-hour drive from New Orleans, had declined to commit thousands of active-duty soldiers to the beleaguered region because their unit was "preparing for Afghanistan deployment in January." Instead, Fort Polk deployed a mere "few dozen soldiers" on September 4 -- five days after the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast:
The U.S. Army has a large facility, Fort Polk, in Leesville, La., about 270 miles northwest of New Orleans. Officials at Fort Polk, which has nearly 8,000 active-duty soldiers, said their contribution so far has consisted of a few dozen soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division manning purification equipment and driving half-ton trucks filled with supplies and equipment. The first contingent of soldiers didn't receive orders until Saturday afternoon.
A spokeswoman at Fort Polk said she did not know why the base received its deployment orders so late in the game. "You'd have to ask the Pentagon," she said. A senior Army official said the service was reluctant to commit the 4th brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Polk, because the unit, which numbers several thousand soldiers, is in the midst of preparing for an Afghanistan deployment in January.
As a result, the Department of Defense committed thousands of soldiers from Fort Hood in Texas -- as well as from other bases around the country -- to the relief effort. In contrast with Myers's claim that there was "no delay" in directing support to the disaster zone, it took these troops "several days" to arrive in Louisiana, according to the Journal:
Instead, the Pentagon chose to send upwards of 7,500 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas and the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., along with Marines from California and North Carolina. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division are able to deploy anywhere in the world in 18 hours. It took several days for them to arrive on the ground in Louisiana.
The Journal article also noted the concerns voiced by Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard a month before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In an August 1 interview with a New Orleans TV station, Schneider had worried that the National Guard equipment transferred to Iraq -- including high-water vehicles -- would be needed at home if a natural disaster struck:
When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot [of] equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem.
"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," said Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider with the LA National Guard.
Col. Schneider says the state has enough equipment to get by, and if Louisiana were to get hit by a major hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have all agreed to help.
According to a September 4 Washington Post article, the three neighboring states cited by Schneider were also hit by Katrina and therefore were too "overwhelmed" to provide such resources to Louisiana:
State officials had planned to turn to neighboring states for help with troops, transportation and equipment in a major hurricane. But in Katrina's case, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were also overwhelmed, said Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokesman.
From the September 6 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight:
McINTYRE: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers also insisted that the deployment of U.S. troops to Iraq has had no effect on their ability to respond here. And, in fact, General Myers said the converse is also true, that the deployment of these troops in the disaster zone is not affecting scheduled deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. They said that the suggestions to the contrary were, quote, "flat wrong" -- Lou.
DOBBS: Absolutely flat wrong, but also at the same time, the Department of Defense, Jamie, has not been the focus of criticism, rather the Homeland Security Department and FEMA. While that's not in his purview, did the defense secretary respond to those charges?
From the September 7 Washington Post article headlined "Bush to Probe Storm Response":
He [Rumsfeld] noted that more than 300,000 Army National Guard and Air National Guard troops remain available to help. He sharply rejected the suggestion that the commitment of large numbers of troops to Iraq -- including National Guard soldiers from Louisiana and Mississippi -- had delayed the military's response. About 41,000 Guard troops are in assisting the region.
"Not only was there no delay," said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I think we anticipated in most cases -- not in all cases, but in most cases -- the support that was required."..........
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Quote:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509070003
Who is Bob Williams, and why is he on TV talking about Hurricane Katrina?
On September 6 and 7, numerous national media outlets featured G. Robert "Bob" Williams, president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, falsely criticizing Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin -- both Democrats -- for their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. But none of these media outlets disclosed that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a conservative think tank that espouses "limited, accountable government" and receives funding from numerous conservative donors. Nor did they make clear how Williams, who was a Washington state legislator during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, is qualified to comment on hurricane disaster relief efforts.
Williams's media tour appears to have been launched by a September 6 Wall Street Journal op-ed. He also was featured on the September 6 editions of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, ABC's World News Tonight, and Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, as well as the September 7 edition of MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast.
On his guest appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Connected: Coast to Coast, Williams claimed that Blanco was largely to blame for the slow government response to Katrina's devastation, because "the feds can't come in" to provide disaster relief unless requested by the governor. This is false; in fact, the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan clearly states that the federal government may take a "proactive" response to a catastrophe and bypass state requests for aid. Normally, it is a governor's responsibility to request federal aid in the event of an emergency. But under a "proactive" response, "[s]tandard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." Moreover, Blanco requested federal aid three days before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reprinted Blanco's August 27 request to Bush to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana and to provide "supplementary Federal assistance." Further, the White House had already authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist with the hurricane emergency. According to an August 26 White House statement, FEMA was authorized "to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency." .........
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Compare the posts on this thread to the NY Times description of Rove's new "OP". Some posts, and the first post in this thread, seem like they could be written by Rove himself or by PR staff at RNC headquarters.
I want you to think....ask questions.....verify or refute.....via your own research, the reliability of what I've presented here. Smear filled talking points aimed at local Louisiana politicians of democratic party affiliation are no subtitute for what this POTUS and his administratiion are really all about.....
all sizzle, no steak! |