Where Have All the Heroes Gone?
Sep. 2nd, 2005 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynI know. People are still dying in the streets. Famine is tracing its muddy fingers all over New Orleans, followed by Pestilence, War, and at last, Death. It's too damn early to be pointing fingers at people.
But I can. And will. I've been stuck at work all day, constantly reading the news updates and getting increasingly disgusted with the way this whole affair has been handled, on all sides. The comparison to 9/11 is imminent, but you'll notice how, where 9/11 had heroes all over the place, from police and firemen, to the citizens of New York, the military, and Giuliani, the media hasn't created many heroes in this fiasco. And although there are a lot of people who deserve the title, they're being overshadowed by all the blame that's going around.
So, because I'm a lazy American bastard, I thought I might as well offend half of the US, and exercise my right to free speech and rant about it. And I'm feeling bitter and ranty. You'll have to live with it.
The Good
The Rescue Workers
First in Harm's Way
As is traditional in these times, no higher accolades can go out than those we extend to the rescue workers who are risking their lives saving others, restoring vital services, and distributing much needed supplies. Underequipped and mostly unarmed, thousands of people are participating in helping their fellow men, opening our eyes to the bright side of humanity. From people serving food at the Houston Astrodome, to power workers and people engaged in clearing streets, to the bus drivers and others actively engaged in evacuating the city, these people are the true heroes, putting life and comfort on the line to bring these people to safety. And that's what matters.
The Medics
Duty Until the Bitter End
The doctors, nurses and paramedics who have been manning the city hospitals deserve a similar round of applause. Despite failing power, flooding, no supplies, and hordes of angry looters intent upon ripping the pharmacy apart, these men and women struggled bravely on, attempting to save one life after another. It must have been hell to stand there and slowly watch the lives of your patients drain away, but most of them refused to leave their posts, giving their all. Unfortunately, we usually only hear them begging for help, for relief from crowds of looters or from lack of supplies. They did more than could be expected with what they had, but we owed it to them to give them more, and failed.
The Police
The Transparently Thin Blue Line
Like most of the emergency services, the police did their best. But the police are marked, not by the lives that they saved, but by the chaos that broke out regardless of their efforts. There were simply too few policemen to patrol the city of New Orleans. All day we've been hearing reports about police snipers being used to retain some kind of order around the Superdome, of them trying to avoid trucks full of armed men, and working at saving the most lives that they could. No police force could have kept order in the Superdome or in the Convention Center, but they tried to make the streets livable. And for the most part, they barely succeeded. They were not ready for their city to become a war zone. Now there has been talk of a lot of cops turning in their badges, refusing to give their lives to fight a war in a destroyed city. And you know what? I can't blame them.
The Pretty Good
People of New Orleans
Panic in the Streets
It's not their fault. I should say that first and foremost. Many of those stranded behind rose to the occasion remarkably, finding it within themselves to provide aid to others, to save lives and protect other people's health. But the surge of chaos among the panicked people caught in the city left most Americans shocked. The entire city seemed to dissolve into an almost feral, animalistic furor at times, such as in the crowd that attempted to swamp a helicopter delivering food, or the massive confusion at the Superdome. It was a perfect time for the city to come together, for citizens to organize themselves into bands and work toward their survival. Disaster training and preparedness would have helped here. But there wasn't enough organization or enough time, and things fell apart. I can't say myself that I could stay calm and rational if my world had been reduced to that, so I can't blame them. I can feel disappointed though.
Americans in General
Rage About the Machine
By and large, most Americans have responded with generosity, either fiscal, or more direct. Homes have been opening all across the country to families who are now destitute. Aid workers and volunteers have come out of the woodwork. There is the outpouring of concern and outrage that we have come to expect from American families. We would feel very happy indeed, if we didn't know that most of the outrage is due to the cost of filling up American SUVs.
The Media
We're Where the News Breaks
As people began to wonder about what was happening in New Orleans, the new media were there to answer it. Every major news facility in the country seemed to be sending a major team of people into New Orleans to get viewers, both interested observers and people frantically searching for news on missing relatives or a city they loved, the information they wanted. It wasn't complete by any means, but given the state of the city, who can blame them? The media response was fantastic, opening up the bridges of information that have been steadily pumping ever since, telling America about the nature of the disaster. Plus they took on everyone from FEMA to the President in a display of media zeal we haven't seen since Watergate. Now, if only they could have brought some more relief in with their news teams...
The Mediocre
Ray Nagin
Mayor without a city
There are a lot of questions haunting Mr. Nagin right now. Why didn't the evacuation start earlier? Why wasn't it more well managed? What was the city of New Orleans's disaster plan? And, given the sorry state of the levees, what the hell was everyone thinking? It's his city, and he bears a lot of responsibility for the chaos that broke out immediately afterwords. Those are the kind of things that haunt a man in his sleep. But he's won a lot of sympathy points for himself in the past few days, perhaps because he is the politician most confronted with the reality he faces. He's been reduced to begging someone, anyone, to come in and save the people of his city. In the process he has blasted a slow Federal response, press conferences, the President, Iraq, and everything that's gone wrong with this whole disaster. So, even if he doesn't have a shining record, at least there's one guy out there speaking the truth. One wonders if he could have engendered even more of a response by calling for armed troops from foreign nations to aid New Orleans, in the absence of the US government.
Kathleen Blanco
Left Holding the Bag
The governor of Louisiana is also taking some flak for the lack of preparedness that the state exhibited, but she can rightly throw up her hands and shrug. Louisiana is a small state, relatively poor. They didn't have the resources to prepare for something like this. The fact that they didn't have much of a disaster-preparedness program ready doesn't look good on her record, but without more resources from the Federal Government, there's very little that she can do. At least she had the presence of mind to get the ball rolling on a number of issues, including asking for 40,000 troops.
The Army Corps of Engineers
Oops
It's their damn levee system that failed! Why don't they take the blame? Simply put, because they've spent years pulling miracles out of their hat to keep the levees out. They warned people that they would fail, they warned people about the effect of a hurricane. But they couldn't do anything about it, not even the army works for free. Already they were scraping the bottom of the budget barrel trying to keep the city above water on a normal year. Don't ask them about tomorrow. And they're the poor, sorry bastards who have to fix it again. Good luck guys. You're going to need it.
The Bad
The US Army
Better Late than Never
It's a given fact in the US media that, unless the Army is shooting down unarmed protesters, they walk out of every disaster smelling like roses. Certainly their appearance today was proof of that, armed National Guardsmen restoring order, passing out food, and relieving the residents of a beleaguered city from the wake of disaster. Or it would, if this wasn't day four after the disaster. Of the twelve thousand National Guardsmen promised by the authorities, or the overwhelming force that was coming to restore order and save the lives of trapped residents, the first groups started rolling in only today, four days after the event. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum said "The cavalry is and will continue to arrive,". Well, I hate to break the news to you General, but the Indians have already burned down the stockade, massacred the pioneers, stolen the horses, and are currently sashaying across the border into Canada. People are asking hard questions now, like was it really so hard to find New Orleans on a map that it took your four freaking days to find it? Were you really that disorganized, even though you're the heart of America's Civil Defense? Why weren't you there, shoring up the levees and evacuating the city before the storm came? Well, at least the Army National Guard is ahead of the Regular Army, whose 82nd division is still sitting on its ass in Kentucky, probably getting drunk to avoid the useless feeling of being kept away from a disaster zone that they could aid greatly, primarily because nobody is willing to send them in. Most embarassingly the Army, who prides itself on being able to respond in force to developing situations around the world in less than 24 hours is going to have to add a new caveat to their declaration; "Anywhere in the world, as long as it ain't in the US of A".
The Butt-Ugly
George W. Bush
There's a War On, Don't Bother Me
This seems a situation custom made for Dubya. His popularity ratings are falling almost as fast as the price of oil is rising, even his supporters are getting nervous about Iraq, the Iranians are about to get a puppet state in the Shi'ite south, Robertson had to go off and threaten to kill Chavez, and he's been pinned in his vacation home by the mother of a dead American soldier. Then along comes a natural disaster threatening a major US city. Hot dog! Now he's can show us himself in his element, an inspiring leader reacting rapidly to an emergency, saving lives through prompt action and throwing the full power of a nation at a problem. It's the image of a man of action that won him such high approval after 9/11.
Instead, he dawdled. As the hurricane spun up to a category 5 and headed for the US, he did nothing. When massive federal intervention would have helped save thousands of lives, he sat on his ass and watched TV. As it ravaged New Orleans he didn't do much either. Instead he hemmed and hawed over Insurance fraud, oil prices, and various other things of little immediate consequence. Instead of being the man of action he became the man of lethargy, apparently completely distracted by the war in Iraq, or shiny objects. And he hasn't learned his lesson yet, if you're going to lie, don't do it where you can get caught. One official compared the flow of positive news out of official channels to the words of the unlamented Baghdad Bob. Now we know the truth, and Bush has caught public flak once more. "This is a storm that requires immediate action, now," the President said today. You're a week too fucking late Dubya. A word of advice: the word insipid has many of the same letters as the word inspired, but it doesn't mean the same thing.
FEMA
Everything Is Going According to Plan
Last year a fake hurricane, hurricane Pam, hit a simulated New Orleans and caused nearly total devastation. It was part of a disaster simulation reported to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Michael Brown, the FEMA chief who had the misfortune to end up talking to CNN, sounds like he's stoned. Back on Thursday he was telling us that resources were being diverted to the Convention Center, that hospitals were almost evacuated, and basically everything was going according to plan. Since then, we've learned that he was so off-base that he probably couldn't even see it on a clear day.
FEMA claims everything is going according to plan. FEMA claims that relief efforts are proceeding as well as can be expected. FEMA claims "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.". Fuck you FEMA, things are going horribly and everybody but you knows it. They claim that their plan is malfunctioning because their plan didn't allow for widespread devastation in the area surrounding New Orleans, something that would reduce their ability to respond. I claim that anybody who doesn't realize that a hurricane isn't just going to brutalize New Orleans and vanish into the cosmos is an idiot. It's rapidly becoming clear that FEMA's plan boils down to "In case of disaster, get on a plane and bogey off to Bermuda while the problem fixes itself." Screw you FEMA, and please, let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Dick Cheney
I Didn't Come, I Didn't See, I Didn't Care
Has anybody seen this guy? I mean, anybody? Biggest disaster yet of his reign as Vice-President, and does anybody know where he is? Rumor has it that he was still on vacation this morning. Maybe he's still there. Well, wherever he is, if he isn't coming back for this first thing, than he can just stay there.
The Thieves, The Rioters, and the Lawless
Anarchy with a Human Face
I don't care how panicked you were, how drug-deprived you were, or how badly your judgment lapsed in the heat of the moment. In a place where children are being raped, where hospitals are being raided, and old people are being threatened and robbed, where you are abandoning every inch of your humanity, you are the lowest of the low. I would spit on you, but I don't want to sully my spit. Most of the looters were looking for food and medicine, but those who were taking advantage of the moment to steal anything not nailed down need to be smacked about the head. And those who deliberately postponed rescue efforts by attacking aid workers need to be run over.
Stories about of gunfights with the police, people shot dead in the streets, hospitals raided, women afraid to go into the bathrooms for fear of being raped. None of this is excusable. Shooting at medical helicopters trying to evacuate sick people, holding up trucks with medical supplies and opening fire on relief and rescue workers is so stupid it's beyond contempt. I can only hope that once they sober up and calm down, they realize the magnitude of what they've done. Please, go get drunk and shoot yourself in the balls. It will make the world a better place.
And the Total Loser
The Department of Homeland Security
If You've Got a Ball, We Can Drop It
Four years of preparation for the Next Big Terrorist Attack, four years of warnings and press conferences telling us how prepared we were for the next big incident, and then when confronted by a real disaster the DHS falls apart like a cheap generic Made-In-Bangladesh-By-Child-Labor plastic kid's railroad set that's been run over by a freight train. It's the so sad that it would be hilarious, a joke that's cost US taxpayers billions of dollars, and provided nothing more than a few cheap jokes that can be used by Letterman. They should change their name to DPC, the Department of Press Conferences. It seems to be the only thing that they're halfway competent at.
In theory, the Department of Homeland Security has spent four years planning for the outcome of a major terrorist attack on our cities. They should have plans ready, resources already deployed, everything prepared to go at the slightest hint of danger whenever something struck America. Are you seriously telling me that they called off their relief efforts when they saw it wasn't a terrorist attack? Or, more likely, did they not have any plans in the first place. Isn't that grand? Four years of preparation for a disaster, and the most we've come up with is another set of press conferences. Even a roomful of trained monkey on typewriters would have come up with something by now, but the DHS is special. They've revealed themselves to be a crack team of paper-pushers and small minded bureaucrats who probably have spent the past four years in negotiations with the FBI about which agency gets the right to run strip searches on Swedish women at airports.
If terrorists had attacked New Orleans with chemical weapons, instead of it being hit by a hurricane, the entire city would have died before the DHS had even figured out who was going to stand next to who in the Press Conference they would call to tell people that help was on the way. But don't worry. They'll raise the terror alert if they need to. And rest assured, the DHS has plans for other disasters. If terrorists do attack your city, the National Guard will be by in four to eight days to scrape your festering corpse off your chair.
Whew. I'm sorry. I had to get that out of my system.
But I can. And will. I've been stuck at work all day, constantly reading the news updates and getting increasingly disgusted with the way this whole affair has been handled, on all sides. The comparison to 9/11 is imminent, but you'll notice how, where 9/11 had heroes all over the place, from police and firemen, to the citizens of New York, the military, and Giuliani, the media hasn't created many heroes in this fiasco. And although there are a lot of people who deserve the title, they're being overshadowed by all the blame that's going around.
So, because I'm a lazy American bastard, I thought I might as well offend half of the US, and exercise my right to free speech and rant about it. And I'm feeling bitter and ranty. You'll have to live with it.
The Good
The Rescue Workers
First in Harm's Way
As is traditional in these times, no higher accolades can go out than those we extend to the rescue workers who are risking their lives saving others, restoring vital services, and distributing much needed supplies. Underequipped and mostly unarmed, thousands of people are participating in helping their fellow men, opening our eyes to the bright side of humanity. From people serving food at the Houston Astrodome, to power workers and people engaged in clearing streets, to the bus drivers and others actively engaged in evacuating the city, these people are the true heroes, putting life and comfort on the line to bring these people to safety. And that's what matters.
The Medics
Duty Until the Bitter End
The doctors, nurses and paramedics who have been manning the city hospitals deserve a similar round of applause. Despite failing power, flooding, no supplies, and hordes of angry looters intent upon ripping the pharmacy apart, these men and women struggled bravely on, attempting to save one life after another. It must have been hell to stand there and slowly watch the lives of your patients drain away, but most of them refused to leave their posts, giving their all. Unfortunately, we usually only hear them begging for help, for relief from crowds of looters or from lack of supplies. They did more than could be expected with what they had, but we owed it to them to give them more, and failed.
The Police
The Transparently Thin Blue Line
Like most of the emergency services, the police did their best. But the police are marked, not by the lives that they saved, but by the chaos that broke out regardless of their efforts. There were simply too few policemen to patrol the city of New Orleans. All day we've been hearing reports about police snipers being used to retain some kind of order around the Superdome, of them trying to avoid trucks full of armed men, and working at saving the most lives that they could. No police force could have kept order in the Superdome or in the Convention Center, but they tried to make the streets livable. And for the most part, they barely succeeded. They were not ready for their city to become a war zone. Now there has been talk of a lot of cops turning in their badges, refusing to give their lives to fight a war in a destroyed city. And you know what? I can't blame them.
The Pretty Good
People of New Orleans
Panic in the Streets
It's not their fault. I should say that first and foremost. Many of those stranded behind rose to the occasion remarkably, finding it within themselves to provide aid to others, to save lives and protect other people's health. But the surge of chaos among the panicked people caught in the city left most Americans shocked. The entire city seemed to dissolve into an almost feral, animalistic furor at times, such as in the crowd that attempted to swamp a helicopter delivering food, or the massive confusion at the Superdome. It was a perfect time for the city to come together, for citizens to organize themselves into bands and work toward their survival. Disaster training and preparedness would have helped here. But there wasn't enough organization or enough time, and things fell apart. I can't say myself that I could stay calm and rational if my world had been reduced to that, so I can't blame them. I can feel disappointed though.
Americans in General
Rage About the Machine
By and large, most Americans have responded with generosity, either fiscal, or more direct. Homes have been opening all across the country to families who are now destitute. Aid workers and volunteers have come out of the woodwork. There is the outpouring of concern and outrage that we have come to expect from American families. We would feel very happy indeed, if we didn't know that most of the outrage is due to the cost of filling up American SUVs.
The Media
We're Where the News Breaks
As people began to wonder about what was happening in New Orleans, the new media were there to answer it. Every major news facility in the country seemed to be sending a major team of people into New Orleans to get viewers, both interested observers and people frantically searching for news on missing relatives or a city they loved, the information they wanted. It wasn't complete by any means, but given the state of the city, who can blame them? The media response was fantastic, opening up the bridges of information that have been steadily pumping ever since, telling America about the nature of the disaster. Plus they took on everyone from FEMA to the President in a display of media zeal we haven't seen since Watergate. Now, if only they could have brought some more relief in with their news teams...
The Mediocre
Ray Nagin
Mayor without a city
There are a lot of questions haunting Mr. Nagin right now. Why didn't the evacuation start earlier? Why wasn't it more well managed? What was the city of New Orleans's disaster plan? And, given the sorry state of the levees, what the hell was everyone thinking? It's his city, and he bears a lot of responsibility for the chaos that broke out immediately afterwords. Those are the kind of things that haunt a man in his sleep. But he's won a lot of sympathy points for himself in the past few days, perhaps because he is the politician most confronted with the reality he faces. He's been reduced to begging someone, anyone, to come in and save the people of his city. In the process he has blasted a slow Federal response, press conferences, the President, Iraq, and everything that's gone wrong with this whole disaster. So, even if he doesn't have a shining record, at least there's one guy out there speaking the truth. One wonders if he could have engendered even more of a response by calling for armed troops from foreign nations to aid New Orleans, in the absence of the US government.
Kathleen Blanco
Left Holding the Bag
The governor of Louisiana is also taking some flak for the lack of preparedness that the state exhibited, but she can rightly throw up her hands and shrug. Louisiana is a small state, relatively poor. They didn't have the resources to prepare for something like this. The fact that they didn't have much of a disaster-preparedness program ready doesn't look good on her record, but without more resources from the Federal Government, there's very little that she can do. At least she had the presence of mind to get the ball rolling on a number of issues, including asking for 40,000 troops.
The Army Corps of Engineers
Oops
It's their damn levee system that failed! Why don't they take the blame? Simply put, because they've spent years pulling miracles out of their hat to keep the levees out. They warned people that they would fail, they warned people about the effect of a hurricane. But they couldn't do anything about it, not even the army works for free. Already they were scraping the bottom of the budget barrel trying to keep the city above water on a normal year. Don't ask them about tomorrow. And they're the poor, sorry bastards who have to fix it again. Good luck guys. You're going to need it.
The Bad
The US Army
Better Late than Never
It's a given fact in the US media that, unless the Army is shooting down unarmed protesters, they walk out of every disaster smelling like roses. Certainly their appearance today was proof of that, armed National Guardsmen restoring order, passing out food, and relieving the residents of a beleaguered city from the wake of disaster. Or it would, if this wasn't day four after the disaster. Of the twelve thousand National Guardsmen promised by the authorities, or the overwhelming force that was coming to restore order and save the lives of trapped residents, the first groups started rolling in only today, four days after the event. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum said "The cavalry is and will continue to arrive,". Well, I hate to break the news to you General, but the Indians have already burned down the stockade, massacred the pioneers, stolen the horses, and are currently sashaying across the border into Canada. People are asking hard questions now, like was it really so hard to find New Orleans on a map that it took your four freaking days to find it? Were you really that disorganized, even though you're the heart of America's Civil Defense? Why weren't you there, shoring up the levees and evacuating the city before the storm came? Well, at least the Army National Guard is ahead of the Regular Army, whose 82nd division is still sitting on its ass in Kentucky, probably getting drunk to avoid the useless feeling of being kept away from a disaster zone that they could aid greatly, primarily because nobody is willing to send them in. Most embarassingly the Army, who prides itself on being able to respond in force to developing situations around the world in less than 24 hours is going to have to add a new caveat to their declaration; "Anywhere in the world, as long as it ain't in the US of A".
The Butt-Ugly
George W. Bush
There's a War On, Don't Bother Me
This seems a situation custom made for Dubya. His popularity ratings are falling almost as fast as the price of oil is rising, even his supporters are getting nervous about Iraq, the Iranians are about to get a puppet state in the Shi'ite south, Robertson had to go off and threaten to kill Chavez, and he's been pinned in his vacation home by the mother of a dead American soldier. Then along comes a natural disaster threatening a major US city. Hot dog! Now he's can show us himself in his element, an inspiring leader reacting rapidly to an emergency, saving lives through prompt action and throwing the full power of a nation at a problem. It's the image of a man of action that won him such high approval after 9/11.
Instead, he dawdled. As the hurricane spun up to a category 5 and headed for the US, he did nothing. When massive federal intervention would have helped save thousands of lives, he sat on his ass and watched TV. As it ravaged New Orleans he didn't do much either. Instead he hemmed and hawed over Insurance fraud, oil prices, and various other things of little immediate consequence. Instead of being the man of action he became the man of lethargy, apparently completely distracted by the war in Iraq, or shiny objects. And he hasn't learned his lesson yet, if you're going to lie, don't do it where you can get caught. One official compared the flow of positive news out of official channels to the words of the unlamented Baghdad Bob. Now we know the truth, and Bush has caught public flak once more. "This is a storm that requires immediate action, now," the President said today. You're a week too fucking late Dubya. A word of advice: the word insipid has many of the same letters as the word inspired, but it doesn't mean the same thing.
FEMA
Everything Is Going According to Plan
Last year a fake hurricane, hurricane Pam, hit a simulated New Orleans and caused nearly total devastation. It was part of a disaster simulation reported to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Michael Brown, the FEMA chief who had the misfortune to end up talking to CNN, sounds like he's stoned. Back on Thursday he was telling us that resources were being diverted to the Convention Center, that hospitals were almost evacuated, and basically everything was going according to plan. Since then, we've learned that he was so off-base that he probably couldn't even see it on a clear day.
FEMA claims everything is going according to plan. FEMA claims that relief efforts are proceeding as well as can be expected. FEMA claims "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.". Fuck you FEMA, things are going horribly and everybody but you knows it. They claim that their plan is malfunctioning because their plan didn't allow for widespread devastation in the area surrounding New Orleans, something that would reduce their ability to respond. I claim that anybody who doesn't realize that a hurricane isn't just going to brutalize New Orleans and vanish into the cosmos is an idiot. It's rapidly becoming clear that FEMA's plan boils down to "In case of disaster, get on a plane and bogey off to Bermuda while the problem fixes itself." Screw you FEMA, and please, let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Dick Cheney
I Didn't Come, I Didn't See, I Didn't Care
Has anybody seen this guy? I mean, anybody? Biggest disaster yet of his reign as Vice-President, and does anybody know where he is? Rumor has it that he was still on vacation this morning. Maybe he's still there. Well, wherever he is, if he isn't coming back for this first thing, than he can just stay there.
The Thieves, The Rioters, and the Lawless
Anarchy with a Human Face
I don't care how panicked you were, how drug-deprived you were, or how badly your judgment lapsed in the heat of the moment. In a place where children are being raped, where hospitals are being raided, and old people are being threatened and robbed, where you are abandoning every inch of your humanity, you are the lowest of the low. I would spit on you, but I don't want to sully my spit. Most of the looters were looking for food and medicine, but those who were taking advantage of the moment to steal anything not nailed down need to be smacked about the head. And those who deliberately postponed rescue efforts by attacking aid workers need to be run over.
Stories about of gunfights with the police, people shot dead in the streets, hospitals raided, women afraid to go into the bathrooms for fear of being raped. None of this is excusable. Shooting at medical helicopters trying to evacuate sick people, holding up trucks with medical supplies and opening fire on relief and rescue workers is so stupid it's beyond contempt. I can only hope that once they sober up and calm down, they realize the magnitude of what they've done. Please, go get drunk and shoot yourself in the balls. It will make the world a better place.
And the Total Loser
The Department of Homeland Security
If You've Got a Ball, We Can Drop It
Four years of preparation for the Next Big Terrorist Attack, four years of warnings and press conferences telling us how prepared we were for the next big incident, and then when confronted by a real disaster the DHS falls apart like a cheap generic Made-In-Bangladesh-By-Child-Labor plastic kid's railroad set that's been run over by a freight train. It's the so sad that it would be hilarious, a joke that's cost US taxpayers billions of dollars, and provided nothing more than a few cheap jokes that can be used by Letterman. They should change their name to DPC, the Department of Press Conferences. It seems to be the only thing that they're halfway competent at.
In theory, the Department of Homeland Security has spent four years planning for the outcome of a major terrorist attack on our cities. They should have plans ready, resources already deployed, everything prepared to go at the slightest hint of danger whenever something struck America. Are you seriously telling me that they called off their relief efforts when they saw it wasn't a terrorist attack? Or, more likely, did they not have any plans in the first place. Isn't that grand? Four years of preparation for a disaster, and the most we've come up with is another set of press conferences. Even a roomful of trained monkey on typewriters would have come up with something by now, but the DHS is special. They've revealed themselves to be a crack team of paper-pushers and small minded bureaucrats who probably have spent the past four years in negotiations with the FBI about which agency gets the right to run strip searches on Swedish women at airports.
If terrorists had attacked New Orleans with chemical weapons, instead of it being hit by a hurricane, the entire city would have died before the DHS had even figured out who was going to stand next to who in the Press Conference they would call to tell people that help was on the way. But don't worry. They'll raise the terror alert if they need to. And rest assured, the DHS has plans for other disasters. If terrorists do attack your city, the National Guard will be by in four to eight days to scrape your festering corpse off your chair.
Whew. I'm sorry. I had to get that out of my system.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 03:09 am (UTC)I hope to hell Brown is fired over this mess, I am more qualified for his job than HE is. *screams* This situation has me so irate and frustrated. Something I seem to have in common with most of the country right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:16 am (UTC)And good luck in replacing Brown. I certainly won't mind.