Posted on 09/09/2005 2:21:53 PM PDT by WestTexasWend
Former Vice President Al Gore urged Americans on Friday to hold the Bush administration accountable for failing to adequately prepare for and respond to Hurricane Katrina.
"When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic flood waters five days after a hurricane struck, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe, but to hold ... the leaders of our nation accountable," Gore told environmentalists at the Sierra Club's national convention.
Gore had been scheduled to give a speech to state insurance commissioners in New Orleans this weekend about the likelihood that global warming will spawn increasingly deadly hurricanes. He decided to take his speech to San Francisco after that conference was canceled.
"The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis, it is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences," Gore said.
Bush administration officials have said Katrina's damage could not have been anticipated, but Gore rejected that.
"What happened was not only knowable, it was known in advance, in great and painstaking detail. They did tabletop planning exercises. They identified exactly what the scientific evidence showed would take place," Gore said.
In his Sierra Club speech, the former senator from Tennessee didn't mention an act of mercy that he was personally involved in - his help airlifting some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans to Tennessee on Sept. 3 and 4. He did that at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of his son years earlier.
Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's personal physician and accompanied him on the flights, told The Associated Press that "Gore told me he wanted to do this because like all of us he wanted to seize the opportunity to do what one guy can do, given the assets that he has."
An account of the flights was posted this week on a Democratic Party Web page. It was written by Greg Simon, president of the Washington-based activist group FasterCures. Simon, who helped put together the mission, also declined an interview.
On Sept. 1, three days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, Simon learned that Dr. David Kline, a neurosurgeon who operated on Gore's son, Albert, after a life-threatening auto accident in 1989, was trying to get in touch with Gore. Kline was stranded with patients at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.
"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute - food and water running out, no power, 4 feet of water surrounding the hospital and ... corpses outside," Simon wrote.
Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and agreeing to underwrite the $50,000 each for the two flights, although Larry Flax, founder of California Pizza Kitchens, later pledged to pay for one of them.
"None of the airlines involved required a contract or any written guarantee of payment before sending their planes and volunteer crews," Simon wrote of the American Airlines flights. "One official said if Gore promised to pay, that was good enough for them."
He also recruited two doctors, Spickard and Gore's cousin, retired Col. Dar LaFon, a specialist in internal medicine who once ran the military hospital in Baghdad.
Most critically, Gore worked to cut through government red tape, personally calling Gov. Phil Bredesen to get Tennessee's support and U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta to secure landing rights in New Orleans.
About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in Knoxville on Sept. 3. The second flight, with 130 evacuees, landed the next day in Chattanooga.
What do you think happens in a flood, Al? And how do you feel about your incompetent Democratic cohort down in Louisiana?
How come the Bush Admin has all ready spend more on LA Flood control then the Clinton Gore Admin did in 8?
I was wondering when this pos' gasbag would be rearing that ugly head of his again?
Freaks like Hyperventilating Al really make the world "a better place" by keeping us laughing.
The LA officials kept the Red Cross out. The NO officials refused to use hundreds of buses to get poor people out of the bowl. If Gore expects us to believe that HE would have rolled roughshod over the LA Democrats with legal authority, he must think we are very gullible indeed.
Well, he ruined that. I read about this after FOX spotted him there on Saturday and actually respected that he did what he did and didn't pose for the cameras... well, he had to open his pie-hole and ruin that.... back to AlBore again.
You lost, Al. Not only that, you lost over FOUR YEARS AGO. Get over it.
Gore, the inventor of New Orleans, did this for backpatting kudos and to appear superior. It's transparent.
But then, Al Snore invented transparent.
al gore should know about rotting
he's been doing it since 2000..
And once again....
As Algore speaks about all the dead bodies,
All the news is that there seems to be far FEWER dead than earlier thought.
Timing is everything , al.
Hey Al, why didn't Clinton fix the problem?
"One official said if Gore promised to pay, that was good enough for them."
All I can say to this is, I've been involved in direct mail all my adult life, and can say with reasonable authority that anything associated with the Democrats had better be COD, if you want to stay in business.
Gore won't be any different, unless negative PR makes it impossible for him to skate on the bill.
None of us would have had to wait too long - He was just waiting for a natural disaster to capitalize on. If none panned out here, he'd head to Bangladesh.
How do you know the blame Bush aspect of this tragedy has jumped the shark? Loser Gore shows up. His support to the blame Bush movement is the kiss of death. Ask Howard Dean.
Thank you for making our point.
Louisiana is in a hurricane zone. Hurricanes come every year, several times a year. There are probably going to be some more this year, and its a dead certainty there will be more next year and the year after.
The Louisiana state authorities did not transfer in from the west coast, they are from there. They blew it big time, thats all there is to it.
Three major American cities have been blown off the map by Katrina, in three separate states. It is only in one of the three, where the authorities set up road blocks to keep aid out and keep the victims in.
In two states of the three, the Guard was ordered in immediately, the rescuers went in immediately, and the local people and the governors and all the rest set about doing what had to be done, immediately.
And, by the way, if the story is true, thanks Mr. Gore for what you did with the flights. Thousands of Americans are doing what they can, and its good to hear their stories.
How many times does it have to be said there needs to be a hurricane of criticism leveled on the democrats for this, but half of you think the average person can see through it. They can't.
So AlGore invented the airlift ?????
He helped 270 people evacuate. We should thank him, then tell him to shut up.
So... AlGore's reaction is to start flying Doctors *away* from the scene of the emergency?
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