Originally Posted by deerslayer

I'm not exactly a huge fan of Bush or our current administration, but it riles me when people exploit tragedy for stupidity (or even worse, political purposes)

This is what makes the American people so great, dude.

Kinda makes me glad I have no interest in being in politics.

See, Itallian guy, here's where you're making your mistake. You're using all this "enlightened" thought. Alright. But you forget that the "Enlightenment" was 300 years ago. This is the new millineum man, get with the times and stop using all that old school logic and reason.

See, Itallian guy, here's where you're making your mistake. You're using all this "enlightened" thought. Alright. But you forget that the "Enlightenment" was 300 years ago.

nice.

I am going to be blunt here.

Anyone stupid enough to have been living in New Orleans or who wants to rebuild New Orleans will not get a single penny's worth of my sympathy. It is a city fifty feet below sea level surrounded by water. It doesn't take a damn rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen if the water level rises a few feet.

Sorry if anyone here had family there, but it is a waste of money, a waste of time, and ultimately a waste of lives to rebuild New Orleans because this will happen again and when it does people will die.

You have no idea of how funny you just sounded Damien for somebody who has been living below sea-level all his life, his parents before him etc. etc. back to the 14th century. (As is the case with the half of the Netherlands)

Difference Ted.

New Orleans is a city below sea level in a vast nation that can quite easily get along without it.

The Netherlands is a nation below sea level and there is no place for the people to move to and still stay in The Netherlands.

The above statement is complete and utter bull. New Orleans' shipping and refining industries are not only vital to the economy of the state and the U.S., the city at its lowest point is 12 feet below sea level. Research comes first, my friend.

The levees were not built to withstand the forces associated with a Cat 5 hurricane; they were designed for a category 3 storm, which is of a much lower intensity.

While it is true that there was an evacuation plan in place for the city of NO, the fact is that no one gave a to follow it.

Another fact is that our state and parish governments bungled the entire thing. It wasn't nature that really screwed us over, it was our own inefficiency at declaring martial law and getting our citizens the hell out of there. New Orleans has 2 highways leading into it- the lanes were going contraflow and there still was not enough time to evacuate the city's population.

To claim that the citizens of New Orleans are "stupid" is to make a bold generalization about the morons raping women in the superdome and looting stores for plasma TVs. Most of these people simply were not able to get out of the city because of the massive amount of traffic on these 4 lanes. Poor urban development and planning by far is the culprit behind 1000-odd deaths in the city.

No, the decision to build a city below sea level, surrounded by water and then make it an important hub of shipping up into the Midwest and for the US at large is the true culprit.

I have already said that the shipping that has gone through New Orleans can be diverted to other port cities, such as Houston, New York and Boston. Hell, instead of building the city just build a port and the only people allowed to live there are the workers who will live and work there in rotations.

I have said it before and I will say it again, rebuilding New Orleans is a stupid idea that will only lead to more deaths. I do not build my house in a floodplain, I do not build it on a fault line, and I don't build it on the side of a cliff in an area plagued by landslides, why would I build it in a city that is below sea level and surrounded by water? The only reason to rebuild New Orleans is so we can spit in mother nature's eye and say we are better than her, until once again it is proven that the best we can put together is far from enough to stand up to the awesome forces that this planet can create and throw at us.

Anyone actually interested in where the myths about mass killings and rapes in the Dome came from, here's a link for you. It's a long read, but anytime a reporter has to go back and correct himself it gets a bit wordy.

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3998

I've actually done SAR and Disaster relief, something that most members of this board I would bet never have. I've been cold, wet, dirty, tired and scared (If you want a come to Jesus moment, stand on top of a 12 foot dike in the freezing rain, desperately trying to get enough sandbags down to stay ahead of the rising water). While I was not at NO, nor a mission of such magnatude, I don't have to imagine the confusion or chaos, I've been to goat ropes before.
While the response was not perfect, I've never been to a perfect response myself, the response was awesome. Considering that most of the infastructure was taken out, it's pretty impressive how many resuers were on scene within hours. Unfortunately within a day things would start to fall apart, and the finger pointing would start. This is when part of me became ashamed to be an American.
Instead of doing what needed to be done, everyone ran either for cover or a microphone. It became political literally overnight.
Robert Kennedy wrote that it was Bush's fault before the storm was even over.
Even though Blanco declared an Emergency on Friday, and Bush declared a Federal state of Emergency Saturday, and Nagan declared a Manditory Evacuation on Sunday, in the aftermath the common party line was that the people were not given warning about the impending disaster.
This disaster is not without precedent. In 1927 a powerful Hurricane hit NO with horrific results. The Federal response to that? The US army sent tents. NO knew their dikes would not stand up to a big storm, it had been proven to them, yet why in the 78 years since they got their butt kicked in '27 did they not do what needed to be done? Bush's fault of course. Not Roosevelt's, Trumans', Eisenhower's, Kennedy's, Johnson's, Nixon's, Ford's, Carter's, Reagan's, Bush I, Clinton's, but Bush II's fault because he cut funding. We Americans love to blame someone, no matter how stupid it is in a historical context. NO had plenty of time to fix their dike problem. They chose not to.
I by no means am letting Bush off the hook, I just see no useful purpose to blaming the guy for something that should have been taken care of by the locals. If you feel the need to blame Bush for anything, blame him for a poor choice in a FEMA Director.
The only thing I really see coming out of Katrina is just how out of control the media and politicians really are. It's to bad that most of the sound bite generation is to stupid to realize how many agenda's got exposed for all to see.