That is an ignorant general statement. Of course they are prepared, but they don't have a magic wand to fix everything instantly.
It takes time to move assets and establish communications, evaluate the situation, formulate a plan.
It is being disingenuous to pretend that without an effective local disaster relief plan the feds could come into a situation where two major disasters (hurricane & flood) happened simultaneously and immediately fix everything.
Any fool can say it could have been done better or quicker.
It could be more effective. Any fool can see that. Pres Bush should fire someone in the Cabinet, now.
Including the head of FEMA, Michael Brown?
He said as much this morning on the TODAY show.
Any effort is only as strong as its weakest link, and Brown is the soft spot in this federal response.
It's tough to accept that one just be "patient" when people are dehydrating to death on the streets of New Orleans.
I disagree. The plan was to huddle people into an inadequate Superdome? Without a security presence there? The plan was to let looters loot? The plan was to move them after a couple of days to the Astrodome? The astrodome isn't taking new guests, last I heard.
Where is the preparedness.
The problem is in depicting the other side as asking for a magic wand. Nobody did that. I certainly didn't. The way the local and state gov handled things makes it clear that they didn't have a grasp of what they were doing.
So where's the preparedness? And that's not a question asking you 'where is the magic wand?' I'm not asking for a magic wand. There's no evidence of serious preparedness, sorry.