Lorie at PoliPundit notes that Katrina is the new Iraq. Couldn’t agree more. The most glaring example in my mind is the hindsight-aided blaming, which could be directed at everyone but is only directed at Bush. Everybody and their dog believed that Iraq possessed WMD’s prior to the war – the French, the Germans, the UN, Clinton, Kerry, most members of Congress and Senate (at least the ones that spoke on the subject) – they all made proclamations of Iraq’s WMD danger. But it was Bush, and Bush alone, that “lied” to the public.
Similarly, the possibility of cataclysmic consequences arising from a cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans given its low sea level has been known by local, state, and federal policy makers for much of the last century. Get that – three levels of government, and the various officials and policy makers over the last century who occupied those posts. But where is the finger being pointed by the MSM?
When the rescuing stops and the clean-up begins (which in my opinion is the appropriate time to start focusing efforts on how this could have happened) a sober assessment on preparedness will be required. It’s regrettable that the MSM’s agenda journalism will in many ways thwart this process by limiting the scrutiny to Bush and Bush alone. Not only is this an abuse of the media’s position as public informers, it will have real negative effects. Such politically driven scrutiny, rather than reality based scrutiny, will no doubt detract from efforts to improve the system going forward and may potentially cost lives in the future.
Still waiting for baby. Tons of contractions but still more waiting to go. I’ll keep you posted.