Inescapable Accountability

[Fred Jones]

Inescapable Accountability

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090801859.html

The following is brought to you by the word "accountability."

Keep that word in mind whenever you hear defenders of President Bush accusing his political opponents of playing the "blame game" by daring to pose pointed questions about why so many people in New Orleans, most of them very poor, had to wait so long for relief from their suffering.

The Bush White House must have run the phrases "blame game" and "finger-pointing" through its focus groups. In his Wednesday briefing, White House press secretary Scott McClellan used variations on those formulations eight times each.

McClellan neatly rolled them into a single sentence when he told off a reporter who had the nerve to ask whether the president had confidence in those who oversaw the federal relief effort. "If you want to continue to engage in finger-pointing and blame-gaming, that's fine," McClellan harrumphed. Nice job, Scott.

McClellan must have been unaware that the White House had been organizing a finger-pointing, blame-gaming project of its own. "In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style," Adam Nagourney and Anne E. Kornblut reported in Monday's New York Times, "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 fruits of that project were quickly visible when White House apologists went to town against New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Grover Norquist, one of Washington's most important conservative activists and a close Rove ally, blamed the chaos on "looting in a Democratic city run by a Democratic mayor and a Democratic governor." Surely McClellan will call Norquist to reprimand him about that awful finger-pointing.

Fox's Bill O'Reilly devoted one of his "Talking Points Memos" to denouncing Nagin and Blanco. True, he was "fair and balanced" in devoting a single sentence in his speech of roughly 500 words to Bush's role: "the Homeland Security office and President Bush were 24 hours late in taking decisive action." Thanks for that, Bill.

The White House is aghast because it is pulling levers that once worked, and nothing is happening.

To borrow one of O'Reilly's favorite phrases, New Orleans was a "No Spin Zone." Good, smart, tough and compassionate reporters gave Americans a direct view of the disaster and kept asking, with increasing urgency, why New Orleans was such a mess.

You can tell the White House knows how much trouble it is in -- that's no doubt why Bush had another news conference yesterday -- by following the Frank Theorem. "It's a rule in American politics," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), "that whichever side denounces the other for politicizing the issue is losing the argument." Bingo.

Once, the White House could use its surrogates to intimidate critics. Especially after Sept. 11, Democrats were concerned -- for both patriotic and opportunistic reasons -- that certain criticisms of Bush might be seen as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." You can't be accused of giving aid and comfort to a hurricane.

This crisis has been an exceptionally clear lesson in this White House's overall approach: Try to get everyone to believe that any criticism of the president will blow back on the critics because Americans just don't like that sort of thing. Attack "finger-pointing," and make sure your allies madly point fingers at your opponents.

Say no one should play politics with a disaster -- and then make sure Republican leaders in Congress set up a commission to investigate the relief effort without asking Democrats for their input on how the investigation should be carried out.

Bush's critics aren't backing off, because they've been here before. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who cooperated with Bush in the days after Sept. 11 but lost his South Dakota seat after a long, White House-inspired campaign accusing him of being "obstructionist," speaks from experience.

"Democrats to this day remain outraged at the blatant efforts that Republicans, especially in the administration, made to undermine the perception of our patriotism and our motivations," Daschle said in an interview.

This time around, Democrats won't be waved off by right-wing commentators or by contrived and insincere appeals to national unity. "I don't think we should pay a whit of attention to administration criticisms," Daschle said. "Democrats need to ask the hard questions and ignore the political attacks that are destined to come when we ask them."

The sounds of contention you are hearing are the sounds of accountability in a free republic. The president may not like it, but it is a refreshing sound.

[Kilmer17]

So now the left is blaming the right, for blaming the left, for initially blaming the right.

Is that right?

[wskin44]

This all well and fair, but it only speaks to Washington politics which never changes. It doesn't address what really happened on the ground and in the water and the failure of local leadership. In fact the Republican/Democrat cat fighting probably contributed to the discord between the Governor of LA and the administration. It is true that the Administration has picked up the mantra of "blame game" everytime someone mentions accountability, but this most liberal of writers (intelligent as he is) has had his head stuck in the poisoned flood waters of Washington DC so long that all he knows is the back and forth of blame politics as usual.

[wskin44]

So now the left is blaming the right, for blaming the left, for initially blaming the right.

Is that right?

It's either right or it's left. I may need several beers to sort it out.

[jwpanic]

the fact the rove is still his top advisor is pathetic.

[Joe Sick]

When Bush shoulders some of the accountability for a problem, it will be the first time.

Our Dear Leader would never be wrong, would he?

[wskin44]

When Bush shoulders some of the accountability for a problem, it will be the first time.

Our Dear Leader would never be wrong, would he?

By your tone I'm not too sure that you love Freedom.

[Guest Gichin13]

Rove is pathetic.

FEMA is worse than pathetic.

Blanco and the Mayor utterly screwed up ...

how about the Red Cross putting on their website that Blanco barred them from immediately bringing food and water to the Superdome?

What an utter mess all the way around.

[Brown 43]

You guys are confused, Rove is a political Genius!

[jbooma]

Rove is pathetic.

FEMA is worse than pathetic.

Blanco and the Mayor utterly screwed up ...

how about the Red Cross putting on their website that Blanco barred them from immediately bringing food and water to the Superdome?

What an utter mess all the way around.

What is worse then that is they didn't have enough food or supplies in the superdome from the beginning, you create a shelter so people can be in there for days and provide enough food and supplies, not just one or two.

[wskin44]

That's very true JB, not to mention transportation out of town. It appears to be a fact that the Red Cross was blocked from bringing in supplies by the State. The gov decided that since she couldn't guarantee their safety she wouldn't let them in. You have some background in emergency management, is this the traditional policy?

She couldn't guarantee the safety for the Red Cross because she couldn't get enough National Guard troops on the ground. Why not is cloudy. A little less than half (5,000) of her NG troups are in Iraq. I read a rumor that the DOD had control of many of the rest who were training to go to Iraq. No idea if this is true. NG had to be brought from other states so she asked for Federal troops (40,000). She had no idea apparently of the can of worms involved in that. (It's scary that such an idiot doesn't have better advisors). So her solution was to move the people out of the Superdome instead of taking food to them.

Except one little problem. She didn't have anywhere to take them. So apparently buses sat on some road outside of town while she tried to find a taker. Meanwhile the situation quickly turned ugly. The Bush Administration offered a compromise that would have put an active duty 3 star general under her command to coordinate security. She turned it down. But it was already Saturday by then and people were dead and dying at the Superdome.

This woman was a deer caught in the headlights. Massive failures going back years coupled with an unprecedented natural disaster, a failure in planning at the national level which never foresaw this level of devastation, a weak idiot running a demoralized FEMA and a Mayor of NO who was literaly in over his head all combined in one moment to put this woman in the crosshairs of history, and she froze.

[twa]

What is worse then that is they didn't have enough food or supplies in the superdome from the beginning, you create a shelter so people can be in there for days and provide enough food and supplies, not just one or two.

And the feds still get blamed ,despite delivering 14 trailer loads of food and water to the superdome before and imediately after the hurricane. There are a lot of unanswered questions.

[Fred Jones]

As I have said numerous times, all levels of government are at fault. However, I posted this article becaus I also believe what goes around comes around. For years this administration has been about no accountability and winning elections based on one event.

[Joe Sick]

By your tone I'm not too sure that you love Freedom.

The Hurricanes hate us for our freedom!

[twa]

Heres a story I have not seen posted:

Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans

By Shaun Waterman

UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

Sep. 9, 2005 at 10:48AM

Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.

An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, "Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot."

"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.

"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.

The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.

He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.

"The only way people can leave the city of New Orleans is to get on (the) Crescent City Connection ... authorities said," reads a Tuesday morning posting on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, which kept reporting through the storm and the ruinous flooding that followed.

Similar announcements appeared on the Web site of local radio station WDSU and other local news sources.

"Evidently, someone on the ground (in New Orleans) was telling people there was transport here, or food or shelter," said Lawson. "There wasn't."

"We were not contacted by anyone" about the instructions being given to survivors to use the bridge to get out of town, he said.

The two paramedics, who were trapped in the city while attending a convention, joined a group of people who had been turned out by the hotels that they were staying in on Wednesday. When the group attempted to get to the Superdome -- designated by city authorities as a shelter for those unable to evacuate -- they were turned away by the National Guard.

"Quite naturally, we asked ... 'What was our alternative?' The guards told us that that was our problem, and no, they did not have extra water to give to us.

"This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile law enforcement."

As they made their way to the bridge in order to leave the city "armed Gretna sheriffs (sic) formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads."

Members of the group nonetheless approached the police lines, and "questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge ... They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.

"These were code words," the paramedics wrote, "for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans."

The authors say that during the course of that day, they saw "other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated."

Efforts to contact the authors of the Internet posting were unsuccessful, but UPI was able to confirm that individuals with their names are employed as paramedics in San Francisco.

Lawson says that his officers "acted in the manner they were instructed to" and defends the order to close the bridge as "the right decision."

He said that in addition to his security concerns, an unmoored vessel on the river "raised the threat that it might crash into and breach the levee, which would have flooded Gretna."

He says that his officers did assist about 4000 people who "arrived at the doorstep of (Gretna City)" either by crossing the bridge before it was closed or approaching from another route.

"We commandeered public transit buses and we took them to higher and safer ground" at the junction of Interstate-10 and Causeway Boulevard where "there was food and shelter," he said.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20050908-112433-4907r.htm

[Thiebear]

6 days to go...

[jrockster21]

Accountability? Bush? Noooooooooooooooooooooooo....

Anyone who has paid any attention to this preisdency knows that the Bush administration backpedals faster than Darrell Green when accountability is brought up!