She pulls out all the stops. The clear warnings for both the hurricane --long and short-term -- as well as for the 9/11 attacks and the situation in Iraq. The lame, heartless photo-op posing by Bush when people nearby were literally dying. The levees. The cut funding. The lack of National Guard due to Iraq. And this finale:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03dowd.htmlOp-Ed Columnist
United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 3, 2005
(snip)
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
(Here Dowd points out that instead of firing Brown, yesterday Bush told him "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.")
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
(snip)
She ends with the inescapable question:
"Who are we if we can't take care of our own?Maureen Dowd's email: liberties@nytimes.com