A Failure of Leadership

[Quixote1818]

A Failure of Leadership


By BOB HERBERT "The New York Times"
Published: September 5, 2005

"Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead"

Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.

The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.

Hospitals with deathly ill patients were left without power, with ventilators that didn't work, with floodwaters rising on the lower floors and with corpses rotting in the corridors and stairwells. People unable to breathe on their own, or with cancer or heart disease or kidney failure, slipped into comas and sank into their final sleep in front of helpless doctors and relatives. These were Americans in desperate trouble.

The president didn't seem to notice.

Death and the stink of decay were all over the city. Corpses were propped up in wheelchairs and on lawn furniture, or left to decompose on sunbaked sidewalks. Some floated by in water fouled by human feces.

Continued:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/opinion/05herbert.html?ex=1126584000&en=edc98d5a43a4ab47&ei=5070&emc=eta1

[Birthmark]

1. The failure of leadership was the least of the problems, imo.

It was Bush's failure as a human being that led to the needless deaths. See this thread for full rant:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2062337