Katrina: Second Draft of History

[Warham]

Katrina: Second Draft of History
I said almost a week ago in my first draft of history:

I don't have time to explain... but trust me... when the history of this thing is written, Gov Blanco will be near criminally liable.
I've heard tons of stuff, most of which, sadly I have not had time to blog. (You would not believe how busy you can be as a refugee) The evidence against Blanco is mounting and damning. Major Garrett of FOXNews confirms something I heard some time ago but had not seen in the MSM.... namely, that the State turned the Red Cross away from the Superdome and refused to let them bring in food, water and other supplies to the people trapped there.

From an interview with Hugh Hewitt as transcribed on Radioblogger

HH: You just broke a pretty big story. I was watching up on the corner television in my studio, and it's headlined that the Red Cross was blocked from delivering supplies to the Superdome, Major Garrett. Tell us what you found out.
MG: Well, the Red Cross, Hugh, had pre-positioned a literal vanguard of trucks with water, food, blankets and hygiene items. They're not really big into medical response items, but those are the three biggies that we saw people at the New Orleans Superdome, and the convention center, needing most accutely. And all of us in America, I think, reasonably asked ourselves, geez. You know, I watch hurricanes all the time. And I see correspondents standing among rubble and refugees and evacuaees. But I always either see that Red Cross or Salvation Army truck nearby. Why don't I see that?

HH: And the answer is?

MG: The answer is the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security, that is the state agency responsible for that state's homeland security, told the Red Cross explicitly, you cannot come.

HH: Now Major Garrett, on what day did they block the delivery? Do you know specifically?

MG: I am told by the Red Cross, immediately after the storm passed.

HH: Okay, so that would be on Monday afternoon.

MG: That would have been Monday or Tuesday. The exact time, the hour, I don't have. But clearly, they had an evacuee situation at the Superdome, and of course, people gravitated to the convention center on an ad hoc basis. They sort of invented that as another place to go, because they couldn't stand the conditions at the Superdome.

HH: Any doubt in the Red Cross' mind that they were ready to go, but they were blocked?

MG: No. Absolutely none. They are absolutely unequivocal on that point.

HH: And are they eager to get this story out there, because they are chagrined by the coverage that's been emanating from New Orleans?

MG: I think they are. I mean, and look. Every agency that is in the private sector, Salvation Army, Red Cross, Feed The Children, all the ones we typically see are aggrieved by all the crap that's being thrown around about the response to this hurricane, because they work hand and glove with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. When FEMA is tarred and feathered, the Red Cross and the Salvation Army are tarred and feathered, because they work on a cooperative basis. They feel they are being sullied by this reaction.

HH: Of course they are. Now Major Garrett, what about the Louisiana governor's office of Homeland Security. Have they responded to this charge by the Red Cross, which is a blockbuster charge?

MG: I have not been able to reach them yet. But, what they have said consistently is, and what they told the Red Cross, we don't want you to come in there, because we have evacuees that we want to get out. And if you come in, they're more likely to stay. So I want your listeners to follow me here. At the very moment that Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans was screaming where's the food, where's the water, it was over the overpass, and state officials were saying you can't come in.

Nagin still gets a hunk of the blame too, but as I said days ago, Blanco will be the one history damns the most. Video of Major Garrett discussing it with Brit Hume can be found at the Political Teen. It is worth the watch.

Other links of note (stealing material Kevin could use in a 10 spot ;-) Michelle Malkin debunks some Katrina myths and my pal Mary Katharine Ham finds an easier way to say 10,000 words.

http://wizbangblog.com/archives/007010.php

[Warham]

Report: Louisiana
blocked Red Cross
Relief trucks were positioned
to assist Superdome evacuees

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 8, 2005
12:00 p.m. Eastern


The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security blocked a vanguard of Red Cross trucks filled with water, food, blankets and hygiene items from bringing relief to the thousands of hungry and thirsty evacuees stranded in the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina struck, according to a Fox News Channel report.

The state agency responsible for Louisiana's security "told the Red Cross explicitly, you cannot come," said Fox News reporter Major Garrett in a radio interview.


Garrett told nationally syndicated talk host Hugh Hewitt that according to the Red Cross, the delivery was block immediately after the storm passed Monday

The Louisiana governor's office of Homeland Security explained to the Red Cross that they didn't want the relief supplies, because they wanted the evacuees to leave, according to Garrett.

"At the very moment that Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, was screaming where's the food, where's the water, it was over the overpass [nearby], and state officials were saying you can't come in," Garrett said.

Garrett acknowledged that floodwaters made access to the Superdome and nearby convention center difficult, but he pointed out that supplies could have been delivered before the levee broke. After that, the National Guard or military could have assisted.

In addition to its determination to remove the evacuees from the Superdome, the state also told the Red Cross the toxic floodwaters were not safe and they did not have the security situation under control.

Garrett said the decision was made and communicated to the Red Cross by the state department of Homeland Security and the state National Guard, both of which report to Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Warham
Katrina: Second Draft of History
I said almost a week ago in my first draft of history:

I don't have time to explain... but trust me... when the history of this thing is written, Gov Blanco will be near criminally liable.
I've heard tons of stuff, most of which, sadly I have not had time to blog. (You would not believe how busy you can be as a refugee) The evidence against Blanco is mounting and damning. Major Garrett of FOXNews

Stop right there, Warham.

Let me beat the liberals to the punch.

You said "Foxnews"

It isn't a valid news source.

End of story.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

:D :D :D

[ELVIS]

That's right...

No story here!

[Warham]

Major Garrett is a true patriot.

:D

[Nickdfresh]

Why not just use the actual FOX news repost then? Where is this article form WARHAM?

[Warham]

Looking for Answers in the Hurricane's Aftermath
Thursday, September 08, 2005


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: The press could get in and out of there, could bring in their TV trucks and everything else, why the hell couldn’t a truckload of water, a truckload of medicine, a busload of physicians, why couldn’t they get through?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIT HUME, HOST: An indignant Senator Leahy asking a question no doubt asked by many others. FOX News correspondent Major Garrett has been looking for answers to some of those questions. He joins me now.

Major, first of all, obviously, the focus of all of the attention has been FEMA (search), the Federal Emergency Management Agency. What is FEMA?

MAJOR GARRETT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: The Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2,500 full-time employees, 4,000 standby employees. A mission statement very simple: Prepare, respond, help recover, reduce risk.

How does it do it? By coordinating with state and local entities and other groups, the Salvation Army (search), Red Cross (search), dedicated to helping the needy when disaster strikes.

HUME: So FEMA is relatively — it isn’t very labor intensive. It mostly works through other agencies?

GARRETT: It works through other agencies. But it has been moved into the Department of Homeland Security. In this crisis, it is a bit a victim of its own bureaucratic boastfulness.

Earlier this year, the new national response plan, released by the Department of Homeland Security, promised this: Seamless integration of the federal government when an incident exceeds local and state capabilities. In the minds of many Americans, this one did, and FEMA, at least initially, in the minds of some, didn’t not respond enough.

HUME: Yes, and the word "seamless" doesn’t exactly spring to mind.

GARRETT: No, it does not.

HUME: But look, I mean, they’re down there. The Red Cross, for example, is there.

GARRETT: Standing by, ready.

HUME: Standing by, ready. Why didn’t FEMA send the Red Cross into New Orleans when we had all of those people there on that bridge overpass and elsewhere?

GARRETT: At the Superdome (search), at the convention center...

HUME: Lack of water, right. Why not?

GARRETT: First of all, no jurisdiction. FEMA works with the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other organizations, but it has no direct control to order them to go one place or the other.

Secondarily, the Red Cross was ready. I just got off the phone with one of their officials. They had a vanguard, Brit, of trucks with water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things ready to go, where? To the Superdome and the convention center.

Why weren’t they there? The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security told them they could not go.

HUME: Now, this is the Louisiana — this isn’t the Louisiana branch of the federal Homeland Security? This is...

GARRETT: The state’s own agency devoted to the state’s homeland security. They told them, "You cannot go there."

Why? The Red Cross tells me that state agency in Louisiana said, "Look, we do not want to create a magnet for more to come to the Superdome or the convention center. We want to get them out."

So at the same time local officials were screaming, "Where is the food? Where is the water?" The Red Cross was standing by ready. The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security said, "You can’t go."

HUME: All right. FEMA does presumably, at some point, have some jurisdiction over some military forces. Of course, the first-responders there are the National Guard (search). Why didn’t FEMA send the National Guard in? You heard that cry from many people.

GARRETT: FEMA does not have jurisdictional control over any state’s National Guard. Only the governor does.

The governor, in this case, Kathleen Blanco (search), a Democrat, did use the Louisiana National Guard for some purposes, did not deploy them in massive numbers initially. And they were not used to move any of these relief organizations in. And they could have been, for the very same reason I talked about earlier. The state decided they didn’t want the relief organizations where the people needed it most, because they wanted those people to get out.

But even today, we know that Governor Blanco has now decided that a mandatory evacuation may not be necessarily after all. But we can go into that later.

GARRETT: So she says.

HUME: What about the use of, by her, of the National Guard to impose law and order during the early looting and all of that?

GARRETT: She had a choice, as I am told. She could have taken up the offer from FEMA to federalize all of the activities in Louisiana, meaning that FEMA would be in control of everything, not only law enforcement, but everything else. She declined to give them that authority.

So, essentially, FEMA was trapped between two bureaucracies. One, the Department of Homeland Security, where many of its decisions have to be at least reviewed and, in some cases, approved, and a recalcitrant state bureaucracy, who wasn’t going to give them the authority they needed to make things happen, among them the National Guard.

HUME: What about this evacuation problem? That clearly was something that New Orleans knew it faced to some extent.

GARRETT: And the city of Louisiana. They have a whole plan that contemplates dealing with an evacuation in the effect of a hurricane three, four or five. Their own plan says, "One hundred thousand residents minimum from the New Orleans area will have to be evacuated." This plan makes it clear...

HUME: You mean, that can’t get out on their own?

GARRETT: That these people will not have their own vehicles. Not only that, it stipulates that these people are disproportionately poor, sick, and in need of special transportation assistance.

And, Brit, I think in these circumstances, bureaucratic language is important. Let’s go to this. This is what the state says. "The Department of Health and Hospitals has the primary responsibility for providing medical coordination for all of the special-needs populations, i.e. hospital and nursing home patients, persons on home health care, elderly persons and other persons with physical or mental disabilities."

Brit, I don’t think you come up with a better description of the people we saw day in and day out at the Superdome and the convention center than this very population that the state’s own plan said needed to be transported to a safe place and provided services.

HUME: No plan for — and, apparently, no facility for doing that.

GARRETT: No facility for doing that. Not only that, those who reviewed the plans that the state put together before were critical of it. In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune (search) had a whole story about this, saying, "No one believes the evacuation plans are possible, feasible, or will be carried out." They proved to be accurate.

HUME: It sounds as if the state will have much to answer for in the investigation coming before Congress, as well as the federal government.

GARRETT: It appears to be that.

HUME: All right. Major, thank you.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168799,00.html

[Sarge's Little Helper]

Looking for Answers in the Hurricane's Aftermath
Thursday, September 08, 2005


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: The press could get in and out of there, could bring in their TV trucks and everything else, why the hell couldn’t a truckload of water, a truckload of medicine, a busload of physicians, why couldn’t they get through?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIT HUME, HOST: An indignant Senator Leahy asking a question no doubt asked by many others. FOX News correspondent Major Garrett has been looking for answers to some of those questions. He joins me now.

Major, first of all, obviously, the focus of all of the attention has been FEMA (search), the Federal Emergency Management Agency. What is FEMA?

MAJOR GARRETT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: The Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2,500 full-time employees, 4,000 standby employees. A mission statement very simple: Prepare, respond, help recover, reduce risk.

How does it do it? By coordinating with state and local entities and other groups, the Salvation Army (search), Red Cross (search), dedicated to helping the needy when disaster strikes.

HUME: So FEMA is relatively — it isn’t very labor intensive. It mostly works through other agencies?

GARRETT: It works through other agencies. But it has been moved into the Department of Homeland Security. In this crisis, it is a bit a victim of its own bureaucratic boastfulness.

Earlier this year, the new national response plan, released by the Department of Homeland Security, promised this: Seamless integration of the federal government when an incident exceeds local and state capabilities. In the minds of many Americans, this one did, and FEMA, at least initially, in the minds of some, didn’t not respond enough.

HUME: Yes, and the word "seamless" doesn’t exactly spring to mind.

GARRETT: No, it does not.

HUME: But look, I mean, they’re down there. The Red Cross, for example, is there.

GARRETT: Standing by, ready.

HUME: Standing by, ready. Why didn’t FEMA send the Red Cross into New Orleans when we had all of those people there on that bridge overpass and elsewhere?

GARRETT: At the Superdome (search), at the convention center...

HUME: Lack of water, right. Why not?

GARRETT: First of all, no jurisdiction. FEMA works with the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other organizations, but it has no direct control to order them to go one place or the other.

Secondarily, the Red Cross was ready. I just got off the phone with one of their officials. They had a vanguard, Brit, of trucks with water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things ready to go, where? To the Superdome and the convention center.

Why weren’t they there? The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security told them they could not go.

HUME: Now, this is the Louisiana — this isn’t the Louisiana branch of the federal Homeland Security? This is...

GARRETT: The state’s own agency devoted to the state’s homeland security. They told them, "You cannot go there."

Why? The Red Cross tells me that state agency in Louisiana said, "Look, we do not want to create a magnet for more to come to the Superdome or the convention center. We want to get them out."

So at the same time local officials were screaming, "Where is the food? Where is the water?" The Red Cross was standing by ready. The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security said, "You can’t go."

HUME: All right. FEMA does presumably, at some point, have some jurisdiction over some military forces. Of course, the first-responders there are the National Guard (search). Why didn’t FEMA send the National Guard in? You heard that cry from many people.

GARRETT: FEMA does not have jurisdictional control over any state’s National Guard. Only the governor does.

The governor, in this case, Kathleen Blanco (search), a Democrat, did use the Louisiana National Guard for some purposes, did not deploy them in massive numbers initially. And they were not used to move any of these relief organizations in. And they could have been, for the very same reason I talked about earlier. The state decided they didn’t want the relief organizations where the people needed it most, because they wanted those people to get out.

But even today, we know that Governor Blanco has now decided that a mandatory evacuation may not be necessarily after all. But we can go into that later.

GARRETT: So she says.

HUME: What about the use of, by her, of the National Guard to impose law and order during the early looting and all of that?

GARRETT: She had a choice, as I am told. She could have taken up the offer from FEMA to federalize all of the activities in Louisiana, meaning that FEMA would be in control of everything, not only law enforcement, but everything else. She declined to give them that authority.

So, essentially, FEMA was trapped between two bureaucracies. One, the Department of Homeland Security, where many of its decisions have to be at least reviewed and, in some cases, approved, and a recalcitrant state bureaucracy, who wasn’t going to give them the authority they needed to make things happen, among them the National Guard.

HUME: What about this evacuation problem? That clearly was something that New Orleans knew it faced to some extent.

GARRETT: And the city of Louisiana. They have a whole plan that contemplates dealing with an evacuation in the effect of a hurricane three, four or five. Their own plan says, "One hundred thousand residents minimum from the New Orleans area will have to be evacuated." This plan makes it clear...

HUME: You mean, that can’t get out on their own?

GARRETT: That these people will not have their own vehicles. Not only that, it stipulates that these people are disproportionately poor, sick, and in need of special transportation assistance.

And, Brit, I think in these circumstances, bureaucratic language is important. Let’s go to this. This is what the state says. "The Department of Health and Hospitals has the primary responsibility for providing medical coordination for all of the special-needs populations, i.e. hospital and nursing home patients, persons on home health care, elderly persons and other persons with physical or mental disabilities."

Brit, I don’t think you come up with a better description of the people we saw day in and day out at the Superdome and the convention center than this very population that the state’s own plan said needed to be transported to a safe place and provided services.

HUME: No plan for — and, apparently, no facility for doing that.

GARRETT: No facility for doing that. Not only that, those who reviewed the plans that the state put together before were critical of it. In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune (search) had a whole story about this, saying, "No one believes the evacuation plans are possible, feasible, or will be carried out." They proved to be accurate.

HUME: It sounds as if the state will have much to answer for in the investigation coming before Congress, as well as the federal government.

GARRETT: It appears to be that.

HUME: All right. Major, thank you.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168799,00.html

Oops. I wasn't paying attention. Tell me again what is going on.

[DrMaddVibe]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
Why not just use the actual FOX news repost then? Where is this article form WARHAM?


Look it up your damn self!

Fucking lazy commie bastard!

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
Why not just use the actual FOX news repost then? Where is this article form WARHAM?

Form

What Form?

[Cathedral]

This isn't news to me, I watched it happen exactly the way it is said to have happened...and people died.

The entire system is broken, not just the right side of it, lmmfao.

Some of the Bush haters just kill me.
I have actually seen more organization in scurrying cockroaches than i do with some of the desperate attacks that continually arise from the DU.

This shit alone is enough to make a guy vote straight Republican for life.

[ELVIS]

Haha!

So true Cat...:D

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Look it up your damn self!

Fucking lazy commie bastard!

It's not my job to do your work for you you lazy fool. And certain people have been know to edit their cut and pastes...

Ha ha! The vast majority of AMERICAN's agree with my views on this and you persist in acting like a 12-year-old McCarthyist retard. Uhuhuhuhuhuh!

Here's a big word for your pea brain since I know you missed the wonders of a college education Ms.BitchsVibe:

nihilism (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=nihilistic).
Main Entry: ni·hil·ism
Pronunciation: 'nI-(h)&-"li-z&m, 'nE-
Function: noun
Etymology: German Nihilismus, from Latin nihil nothing -- more at NIL
1 a : a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless b : a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths
2 a (1) : a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility (2) capitalized : the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination


That's for your moronic sycophantism.

[Warham]

I don't cut and paste anything.

Major Garrett is a godsend.

Dan Rather should take notes.