It took days to respond to a storm we knew was coming nearly a week in advance. News networks seemed to have no problem getting to the affected areas right away, but the National Guard seemed to find getting there impossible -- incredibly, equipment that would've helped in flooding had been sent to the desert in Iraq.
New York Times, via AMERICAblog:
Pentagon officials asserted that deployment of thousands of National Guard members from the gulf states to Iraq and Afghanistan had not affected relief efforts. But on Tuesday the two hardest-hit states, Louisiana and Mississippi, which each have more than 3,000 National Guard troops in Iraq, requested military specialists and equipment from other states, ranging from military police and engineers to helicopters and five-ton, high-wheeled trucks that can traverse the flood waters.
Hospitals were cut off, police were non-existent, mass panic took hold, and many people wondered how an administration that talked a good game about being ready for a major terrorist attack could be so unprepared for an event with the same consequences of a such an attack. Exposed as a major league BSer, Bush's long slide in the polls began.
We thought we knew everything about the response to Katrina. The total lack of advanced planning, the slowness of FEMA to act, the inability of the Bush administration to take it's responsibilities seriously. But it turns out that things were worse. When other nations offered help, Bush turned them away...
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