[gandalftb]

Had they been, they could have watched thousands of poor people at the convention center for five days with no food and water. They could have also watched heavy lift helicopters dropping sandbags on the levees and maybe one of them could have wondered whether they could spare one sortie to drop a pallet load of MREs and water off in those five days.>Priorities are all screwed up here, they should have at least one person assigned to monitor the media and report directly to Chertoff with such obvious mistakes.

Of course FEMA is busy but if you can't relieve the largest gathering of survivors for days, they are not doing the right jobs at the right time.

[WHBates]

FEMA and DHS were not in charge at that time, in fact if they are now it's because they are breaking the law. Blanko has still not turned over management to the Feds AFAIK.

[Rokke]

"Had they been, they could have watched thousands of poor people at the convention center for five days with no food and water."

Two things about that statement. First of all, there are AP wire pictures of helicopters delivering MRE's and water to the people at the convention center on Thursday. That was the first day anyone bothered to tell federal authorities that there were people at the Convention Center. It was also the first day news reports appeared that people were at the convention center. As late as Friday, media idiots like Geraldo were reporting that people at the Convention Center had received no food or water. That was a blatant lie, as pictures showed pallet after pallet of water and MRE's being distributed to people there before Geraldo even showed up. Please do not bite off on the distorted picture you are getting from the media. As you are fully aware from events at Fallujah, the picture provided by the media is so fuzzy and unreliable that it is safer to assume it is wrong than right. Friday was 4 days since the hurricane left and 3 days since the major flooding hit. If anybody was in that Convention Center for five days without food or water, it is clearly not the fault of FEMA or the military. A better question would be, why was anyone directed there at all (it was not a planned shelter), and if the city directed them there, why did the city not supply provisions for at least one or two days. Again, your frustration here is being misdirected.