http://wuzzadem.typepad.com/wuz/2005/09/another_katrina_2.html
To sum up: the woman he was talking about was one of the 32 found dead at St. Rita’s Nursing Home. They all died on Monday the 29th. The “Someone’s coming to get you” phone conversations never happened.
This is mind-boggling. Someone give that guy an Oscar.
I must be honest, i thought you meant George Broussard with that title, and you were referring to Duke Forever - in which case I was thinking “Duh”
Actual topic though, people are just fucking amazing and will lie about anything, even things you can easily prove wrong.
… did he know the actual details firsthand, or was he reacting to the events as he thought (or been told) they’d occurred? Perhaps he got the details mixed up with something else?
In any event, if his whole breakdown was a total ruse, give the man an Oscar, because whether the facts are correct or not, the clip of his breakdown is still incredibly moving – while the story he recounts may not fit with the facts, his desperation is undeniable.
Well he certainly fooled me, if he wasn’t fooled himself. But like Myers said, those tears were real, and I’d have to imagine that since he’s not a Hollywood actor they came from hardcore desperation and frustration on some level. That said, I don’t like being played like a puppet. I hope to god he didn’t know any of this himself.
Yeah, it is possible that he was the one who was lied to, you know. It was somebody else’s mom he was talking about. And who can blame him for believing it? I mean, the rest of what was going on supported the story.
What’s mind-boggling to me is how conservative loons are trying to spin this even while corpses are still being bagged on the streets. And saying that there’s been some sort of Democratic plan in place to lie about everything from the day that Katrina hit, to make the Republicans look bad. What a sickening spectacle.
As for the Broussard thing, the woman still died, somebody still seriously fucked up the evacuation of that nursing home, and I’d say the feds have to take ultimate responsibility for the whole mess. Blaming NO and LA for all this is just insane. What the fuck do you guys even have a federal government for if it isn’t supposed to take care of huge national disasters? Sheesh. I can’t believe anyone sane could write the crap at that website Rollory linked.
And I think it’s pretty obvious from the tape that Broussard wasn’t lying. He probably misheard the story, but come on; there wasn’t anything fake or calculating about his statements to Russert.
I admit I find it more believable that he didn’t have the complete story than that he made it up knowing it to be untrue.
However, I also find it difficult to believe that he was under the impression that all the details he was providing were true. That would require someone - probably the woman’s relative - to have told the lies. Probably what happened is simply he said something like “they said they’d come get her, and they didn’t and she drowned!” and he said that on Friday or Saturday or some such thing.
Which makes the Meet the Press version tolerable. But very, very embellished all the same.
Did you ever stop to think that the situation down there was pretty chaotic? I’m not surprised that Broussard got the story wrong. The guy looked on the edge of a breakdown. He probably just mixed up two stories. Anyhow, I think it’s absolutely odious for these conservative net weasels to sit back and crucify this guy, who was in the middle of the relief effort, dealing with the biggest catastrophe to hit the US in decades, for telling Tim Russert a story that confused details.
And anyone who could have watched Broussard and immediately thought “That guy’s gotta be lying!” as mentioned at the website, has to be either a complete idiot or another unthinking Republican tool.
The number of days it took for feds to get to the nursing home and collect the bodies that would debunk Broussard’s story is the far more egregious affair. Pretty much worse than even them being left behind in the first place.
NPR this morning: “as the federal government comes under increasing criticism of its response to the hurricane”, etc. etc. Do they ever mention the fact that Nagin ignored his own evac plan and didn’t use his buses, or that Blanco basically froze in shock for a couple of days? No, they do not. It isn’t like there is zero ass-covering going on here.
This particular instance isn’t a conservative loon thing, or Dem vs Rep (at least, I don’t see it that way). It is somebody going on national TV and manipulating the emotions of everyone - and, more importantly, future reactions to what is going on - based on a lie.
Damn Rollory, whether she was alive or not, nobody got her for a week and half, almost two weeks. It doesn’t really matter if she was making phone calls or not. Nothing about this story-- even if it had turned out that it was a super huge lie and she’d actually been rescued-- mitigates the whole of what happened down there.
Where did I say it did? It’s one more outrage in a series of outrages. Most of them are clearly incompetence. If this one was malice, that involves a deliberate choice, which is why it pisses me off even more than the others.
I don’t think Broussard knew it was a lie at the time. He knew the story, he was fuzzy on the chronology, he invented a chronology for dramatic impact.
While watching it I kind of saw that he didn’t have the story fully formed when it occurred to him to tell it–and frankly I don’t think very many people were dying of drowning by Friday, unless there was an extremely bungled evacuation.
Now, if he said the guy’s grandma died of dehydration and not drowning on Friday the story would’ve been more plausible. Plenty of people were dying of dehydration because rescue was too slow getting to them.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-5:
Subject: Management of Domestic Incidents
To prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies, the United States Government shall establish a single, compre-hensive approach to domestic incident management. The objective of the United States Government is to ensure that all levels of government across the Nation have the capability to work efficiently and effectively together, using a national approach to domestic incident management. In these efforts, with regard to domestic incidents, the United States Government treats crisis management and consequence management as a single, integrated function, rather than as two separate functions.
There’s this part to:
(6) The Federal Government recognizes the roles and responsibilities of State and local authorities in domestic incident management. Initial responsibility for managing domestic incidents generally falls on State and local authorities. The Federal Government will assist State and local authorities when their resources are overwhelmed, or when Federal interests are involved. The Secretary will coordinate with State and local governments to ensure adequate planning, equipment, training, and exercise activities. The Secretary will also provide assistance to State and local governments to develop all-hazards plans and capabilities, including those of greatest importance to the security of the United States, and will ensure that State, local, and Federal plans are compatible.
The point here is that breakdowns in the local responses are expected to happen.
This finger pointing is typical Republican spin: “But they didn’t do our job! It’s their fault!”
Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-5:
Subject: Management of Domestic Incidents
To prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies, the United States Government shall establish a single, compre-hensive approach to domestic incident management. The objective of the United States Government is to ensure that all levels of government across the Nation have the capability to work efficiently and effectively together, using a national approach to domestic incident management. In these efforts, with regard to domestic incidents, the United States Government treats crisis management and consequence management as a single, integrated function, rather than as two separate functions.
There’s this part to:
(6) The Federal Government recognizes the roles and responsibilities of State and local authorities in domestic incident management. Initial responsibility for managing domestic incidents generally falls on State and local authorities. The Federal Government will assist State and local authorities when their resources are overwhelmed, or when Federal interests are involved. The Secretary will coordinate with State and local governments to ensure adequate planning, equipment, training, and exercise activities. The Secretary will also provide assistance to State and local governments to develop all-hazards plans and capabilities, including those of greatest importance to the security of the United States, and will ensure that State, local, and Federal plans are compatible.
The point here is that breakdowns in the local responses are expected to happen.
This finger pointing is typical Republican spin: “But they didn’t do our job! It’s their fault!”[/quote]
Yes and no. They have their faults but to let state and locals off the hook though is disgusting and damned wrong. Are we going to have the local DA’s going after Nagin or Blanco for not following plans to get those people who couldn’t get out on their own, not using buses that were in plans like they’re going after those nursing home owners already?
It’s doubtful. Local authorities and plans will always fail. So will federal plans. But the federals have the ability to martial resources nationally. That’s why you need to establish command and control and disseminate authority through those who have the ability to bring in resources from a variety of sources.
I’m no fan of Guliani, but he saved Bush’s bacon by doing that work (anhd a damn great job) when the towers fell. He had a huge advantage with the limited range of the actual disaster area, however. Also, New York itself has the resources of a small nation to count on.
On the evening of September 11th I watched a straight mile of construction vehicles in Brooklyn getting ready to roll into Manhattan and get to work. They had come over from New Jersey and Pennsylvania that day.
To that point, if the feds had been supporting the local authorities from the get go, as they asked them to do, most of the mistakes they made would have been avoided because they would have had the support they needed.
Sorry, but as I’ve said before, some of the blame must be put squarely on the weak shoulders of both NO and LA. All of it? Of course not, but some. The city and state have been aware of what could happen in a Cat 4+ hurricane since at least the late 70’s. They failed to act. Instead of making levee reinforcement their top budgetary priority, they spent money on every other possible project and whined to the feds to make them safe.
That doesn’t cut it. If you know your home/the largest city in the state could be obliterated next year, you don’t beg Uncle Sam for a handout, get rejected, and say “mission accomplished.” You do whatever it takes to make yourself safe. This complacence in the face of danger was one of the main reasons I left the area. An entire generation of mayors and governors were willing to say “As long as it doesn’t happen on my watch, I don’t care. Let’s spend the bucks on things that will get us votes next November.” Horrifyingly stupid.
I agree that the absence of buses and proper transportation for the people in NO without cars or sufficient money was a big shortcoming of the local government. It’s their responsibility to evac people before the storm hits. Sure, contraflow helped a lot, but there could have been more done.
But after the disaster, in my opinion, it comes down to the federal government to provide relief. The entire city was destroyed and a lot of the state was blasted pretty hard. You can’t expect local government to do much when everything is under water. The federal response afterwards was sluggish, mismanaged, and people died. There’s no excuse for that. So yeah, there’s blame to go around, but the feds should really get the largest chunk. Even if they had managed to move all those buses and get a bunch of people out, a lot would have stayed anyway, and the situation that came after the levees broke wouldn’t have changed much if the federal response remained the same. A lot of the local politicians in NO/LA will probably step down after this anyway. Will anyone in the federal government? With the exception of Brown, the fall guy – nah. They’ll be around. And if this happens somewhere else, they need to be ready to respond appropriately, and that means things in Washington need to change.
That’s an excellent point Scry.
Will there be any real accountability on the Federal level? I don’t think that having the Foxes investigate the henhouse is going to cut it.