Yes, sometimes government agencies really are that clueless

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I keep thinking back to the summer of 1985, which I spent in Japan, living in a so-called gaijin house (cheap rooming house for long-term foreign residents) and doing research.

One day in August when the library was closed and I was just hanging around in the gaijin house, one of the other residents came to my room and said, "Turn on your TV. Something big has happened, but I'm not sure what."

I was one of the few residents who understood Japanese well enough to follow newscasts, so I quickly switched on the TV to hear that a Japan Airlines 747 was missing and presumed crashed somewhere between Tokyo and Osaka.

As I interpreted what the newscasters were saying, a crowd gathered, including, among others, a guy who had just finished his term of enlistment in the U.S. Air Force.

Within a few minutes, the TV news helicopters were flying over flaming wreckage on a mountainside in the so-called Japan Alps.

A few minutes after that, the newscaster reported that rescue teams were on their way to the crash site. It soon became obvious that the teams were going to drive and climb in.

The Air Force guy couldn't believe it, especially since the TV news crews were at that moment hovering over the site in helicopters.

Eventually, someone must have clued the Japanese authorities into the possibility of using helicopters for a mountainside search and rescue, but it was announced that the helicopters couldn't go in because it was getting dark.

The Air Force vet just lost it there. He started ranting about how when he worked search and rescue, they attached flood lights to the sides of the helicopters, because you couldn't wait and possibly let people die for lack of attention. People would die of shock and exposure, even if they weren't that severely injured.

And that's what happened. The Japanese Air Force didn't go in with helicopters till the next morning. By that time, there were only four surivors out of 495 passengers and crew. They said that several others had survived the crash but had died, one by one, during the night.

The 1985 JAL crash remains the worst crash of a passenger plane in history.

Almost all the passengers were Japanese. There was no racism involved, just sheer incompetence and cluelessness.

In the case of the Bush administration's response to New Orleans, I think there's undoubtedly a large measure of callousness and perhaps even malice involved, but it's all mixed in with cluelessness.

[wli]

1. I don't buy it. Look at the PR. Look at the warmongering.

Look at the election fraud. They are competent. This is malice.

[Not_Giving_Up]

2. There's a difference here

What you describe is completely different. They were rushing to the site of the crash, just not in the most brilliant way.

That did not happen here. No one was rushing to New Orleans to save the people. They were sitting on their asses.

No, they aren't incompetant...this was willful.

[SofaKingLiberal]

3. If they don't know that people can die in 3 days or less without

fresh water, then we are even more fcked than I thought.

[Kagemusha]

4. Hi, Lydia. Here's the thing that gets me...

Unless the WH was wholly ignoring its National Weather Service (and perhaps it did), the fact that New Orleans was not immediately and totally obliterated was wholly unexpected given the apocalyptic scenario that was shaping up. The fact things were not as bad as they could have been, and yet the levees broke, shouldn't excuse a lack of rigorous action prior to the hurricane's strike; it should damn that inaction all the more because the expectations ought to have been so much more dire. The US should be a nation celebrating how good it is and how it's not as bad as it could be. Instead, it's mourning how bad it is because it's so horrible even though it should have been so much worse in so much shorter a period of time.

And to think just one year ago FEMA was considered an effective agency.

[DELUSIONAL]

5. Many in the military are trained to do search and rescue

My dad is a Navy Veteran and has been involved in many civilian and military type rescues all during his career -- and I've been bitching since this began -- WHERE IS THE MILITARY? I just don't understand why ALL HAND weren't called to duty.

This whole disaster has been handled INCOMPETENTLY -- and it will be sometime before we know just how many people died needlessly.

I just don't understand why the military wasn't brought in IMMEDIATELY?

Also many Governors have been concerns what would happen with the majority of the National Guard off in Iraq -- now we have an answer to their question.

We KNOW that the aid has to be immediate -- but we saw zero leadership from bushie -- he was off playing and raising money and relaxing. He showed zero concern for the life or death situation of thousands of people.

I really do absolutely hate the smirking killer.

His only concern is for the oil and the profits of his buddies.

[1songbird]

6. I agree with you completely.

My feelings have also gone from dislike to hate for our pathetic leader.