Editorials are about opinions. Opinions, by nature, are biased. Granting these two premises it logically follows that editorials are biased. Mr. Wellman, just because an editorial does not mention every fact you have at your fingertips does not mean the writer of said editorial needs to check their facts.
And as for this novel idea – since according to you, liberals do not quite grasp this concept – where are the incorrect facts besides saying Air Force One is a 767? If you have turned on your TV to see the news in the past two weeks, you would have seen that on Aug. 26 Gov. Blanco declared a state of emergency and requested assistance from troops.
The next day a federal emergency was declared for the areas soon to be hit by Katrina. The day before the hurricane hit, Mayor Nagin ordered mandatory evacuation of New Orleans and the National Hurricane Center warned President Bush of the potential for the levees to break. The next day, while still on his vacation, while the hurricane was destroying the homes of thousands of American citizens, President Bush traveled to California to talk about Medicare and play a guitar with a country artist. The same day the head of FEMA finally responded to the state of emergency and gave FEMA employees two days to get to the area. On Aug. 30 the first reports of mass looting hit the airwaves, the Pentagon refused to send more National Guard troops into Louisiana – most of it’s National Guard troops are in Iraq – and the President spent his last day of vacation at the ranch.
The next day food and water supplies were gone. Bathrooms in the Superdome were overflowing with waste. People were dying. Children were dying. Americans were dying. On Aug. 31, news reports stated that New Orleans was in a state of anarchy – yes, anarchy: no police, no firefighters, no one keeping order or protecting the citizens. Women and children were being raped. Mayor Nagin issued a desperate plea to the federal government to help.
The following three days Karl Rove and President Bush began their campaign of blaming local and state officials for not being well prepared, despite the fact that the funding to protect New Orleans from hurricane devastation had indeed been cut.
When the President flew over the Gulf Coast surveying the destruction – to avoid disrupting relief efforts on the ground, according to Mr. Wellman – the only relief efforts on the ground were the federal government’s order to National Guard troops to evacuate a South American ambassador and her family from a flooded hotel, but not any of the other people stranded in the same hotel. Another hotel full of guests and poor citizens who fled rising waters were allowed to evacuate – except it was only the hotel guests that could leave. The citizens were kicked out of the hotel – the doors locked behind them – to survive on their own.
I ask again, what facts are in need of being checked? Bush did blame local officials. People did loot out of necessity and not just out of greed for a DVD player from Best Buy or Circuit City. There was anarchy in the city, and relief was far too slow. FEMA has been on the ground before hurricanes hit in Florida, so what makes New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast different?
Now, this quote that “Bush hasn’t gone a day without a public event in support of the destruction” is first of all wrong. All you need to do is turn on Fox News to figure that out. Second of all, I don’t think you said what you meant to say. In the heat of being “infuriated to the core” you argued that Bush is in favor of the destruction of the area hit by Katrina. While I’m sure you actually meant to say he’s in favor of relief to the devastated areas, it’s not what you actually said. Since you like fact-checking, maybe you should try to grasp a concept called proof-reading, too.
Off the topic of the hurricane, your insinuation that former President Clinton does not care about terrorism, well, I’m getting really sick of hearing this fallacious argument. How is it that if you do not support everything that the Bush Administration does then you aren’t against terrorism? This does not follow. I honestly do not believe that most people in non-Republican parties in this country want innocents to die in the name of disagreement with a government’s policies or religious differences or any other ridiculous scapegoat idea you can think up for a terrorist attack.
This was the Department of Homeland Security’s first real test, and it has failed miserably. If you think that my facts are wrong, turn on whatever conservative news media you choose and you’ll see otherwise. Well, perhaps not Pat Robertson’s channel; he just issued a statement saying that John Roberts should be “thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good.” If anything “infuriates you to the core,” it should be that and the slow movement of aid to this area.
By the way: Associated Press, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune? Congratulations, Mr. Wellman, you are part of the mainstream media.
Katy Rowe is a senior anthropology and English major. She may be contacted at [email protected]
