Katrina Misses New Orleans, Heavily Damages Mississippi

Front Page Headline - August 30, 2005

Yes, that is right. the New York Times blared to the world that New Orleans was OKAY the day AFTER the hurricane went through. All attention was directed to Mississippi, according to the Times.

Shortly the New York Times will be blaming this headline on George Bush too I suppose. However they have already said that his failure to respond to the levee breaks was proof of his lack of concern for the people of New Orleans. The reason there was not food for the people at the Superdome was Bush's fault. So they say.

The headline above was on Tuesday. It was not until Wednesday that the consequence of the levee breaks was understood by local officials. However the next day, on Thursday, the New York Times said that Bush had known "since Sunday how bad it would be." What has he been waiting for? "Where is FEMA?" was their demand. He had known since Sunday? Why was the Times claiming two days later that there was no problem, but Bush is supposed to know there is?

To the Times, the levee breaks are not an issue for local officials charged with managing the emergency plan . They are not an issue for the Mayor who set up the Superdome as refuge of last resort, imploring people to "bring food and water with them" since none had been planned for or stored there. He made this spur of the moment decision on Sunday even though that was not what the official emergency plan called for. It was still not a problem for the Mayor on Tuesday when it appeared that there was only minor damage to New Orleans.

On Wednesday it became a crisis that George Bush has not provided food and water for people that the Mayor sent to the Superdome because he could not figure out how to implement that part of the official local emergency plan that said these people would be evacuated using the buses that he left in the flood plane until it was too late to use them. He could still have used them on Tuesday as the plan provided (while the New York Times was saying Katrina missed New Orleans) but he didn't think he needed to evacuate the people from the Superdome at that point.

Click here to see the picture of the buses the Mayor failed to use to evacuate the Superdome and Convention Center.

The buses were not flooded until Wednesday. It was then that George Bush was supposed to provide food for these people who were stranded. It was then that it became George Bush's fault. It was then the Mayor went on radio and cursed George Bush. It was then that all of the media in American agreed it was George Bush's fault.

On a similar point, several levees in New Orleans had just been rebuilt with money provided by the federal government. It was two of those that failed. However when they failed, the New York Times decided it was George Bush's fault that he did not ask congress to approve additional money to repair other levees that did not fail. This failure to ask for more funds proved how little he cared about New Orleans, according to the Times. Therefore the levees that failed were his fault too even though THEY had been rebuilt.

With that same attitude, I want to know why George Bush allowed the New York Times Editors to claim on Tuesday August 30, 2005 that New Orleans was okay, when he had to know that newly rebuilt levees would fail later that day and create a crisis? Don't you want to know too?

Sometimes the willingness of the Main Stream Media to blame George Bush for everything gets a little bizarre.