He laid it the truth out again on Oprah today.
“In the days that followed Katrina’s landfall, President Bush was criticized for slow relief response. But what many people don’t know, he says, is that a state’s governornot the presidentis in charge of emergency response. “The federal government’s role is to help the governor,” he says.
Five days after strong winds and floodwaters turned lives upside down, President Bush met with then Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. He says tension was high.
“Everybody’s blaming everybody else so I said to the governor, ‘Governor, give me the authority to send in federal troops,’” President Bush says. “By law, the president cannot send federal troops to conduct law enforcement without a declaration of insurrection and/or a request from the governor.”
In his memoir, President Bush writes that Gov. Blanco requested 24 more hours to make her decision. “I’m not attempting to blame only the governor,” he says. “We all could have done a better job.”
Although he was unable to send in troops without the governor’s permission, he says he could have sent in unarmed military personnel. “The problem was, I was listening to all the reports, many of which turned out not to be trueinterestingly enoughthat there was rape, murder and gunfire,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to put a troop in harm’s way without the capacity to defend him or herself. If I had to do it over again, knowing what I know today, I’d have sent them in with no weapons.”
http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Inside-the-Mind-of-Former-President-George-W-Bush/9
Wow. The excerpt you posted shows that the lies the MSM wrote about murders, rapes occurring meant that Bush didn’t feel he could safely send in unarmed troops to help NO and Blanco would not authorize armed troops. SO the MSM played a key, tragic role in deepening the losses of Katrina and then the MSM blames Bush for it.
What I said from jump - it was a local responsibility, not a federal one. None of my brilliant friends could understand the idea.