by Starman » Tue Sep 06, 2005 4:07 am
Thank-you for allowing me to ask my question, actually in several parts, so please bear with me, sir; Uh, Mister 'President', could you tell us why so many facts about the government's greviously mismanaged relief and rescue operations have been kept hidden from the public by the mainstream media and government officials, allowing the public to have an enormously inaccurate perception of the true scale of this enormous tragedy and the role of FEMA and other official agencies in making this disaster incalculably worse than it otherwise would have been? -- <br><br>We're talking here, Mr 'President', of failures of impedance, obstruction, delay, denial and prohibition that severely confounded rescue and aid operations -- as opposed to the failures of ommission or commission that we've heard so much about, as in the lack of command and control leadership, the lack of coordination and communication, ineffective allocation of resources, and failure to anticipate and plan for emergency contingencies, and so-forth. <br><br>The failures in question, Mr 'President', the public has heard little or nothing about concern such atrocious bungles and mismanagement as: the several hundreds of volunteer with their own boats who FEMA didn't allow to help with the urgent search for trapped survivors in the critical days immediately after the flood, the National Guard Troops and Jefferson Parish policemen who turned-back everyone after several days of their being seemingly abandoned and completely cut-off from the world with no communication, lacking urgent supplies of food and water, and with endless unfilled promises of aid and busses, decided their only last hope was to help themselves by trying to walk out the only open road east to safety, with scores of volunteering police officers and first-responders and doctors and tons of medical supplies, whole convoys of trucks with food and water and ice, the National Forest Service's offer of fire-fighting aircraft, scores of busses and even more unacknowledged generous offers of assistance and expertise and manpower and food and help -- all inexplicably held-up, refused, turned-away, ignored and/or put on hold through sheer incomprehensible bureaucratic incompetance.<br><br>Certainly, Mr 'President', this bungled, minf-boggling non-constructive response is on a scale so vast that surely, Mr. 'President', if the people were finally, for the first time since your administration took the White House by fraud and guile, if the people were told the absolute truth they would see FEMA's confounding interference must rise to the category of criminal neglegance and misfeasance -- Is THIS why such damning facts have been scrubbed from the newsmedia, Mr 'President'?<br><br>And, Mr 'President', if you are willing to concede that such is the case, that the media are wittingly or unwittingly covering for FEMA's sabotaging self-empowerment, resourceful self-reliance and community mutual-help networks, would you declare that at least for the sake of this tragedy that your administration is making an historic exception, and call for honesty and transparency and accountability in this issue of FEMA actively blocking neighbor helping neighbor?<br><br>Uhm, thank-you for answering this vital question the public has a crucial right to know, Mr. -uh- 'President' (quickly turning-away to hide the involuntary eye-roll and first indications re: tentative failure of the long-held masterfully-repressed gag-reflex).<br><br>Starman<br> <p></p><i></i>
