Michael Chertoff: people stranded in NOLA chose to stay; it's their fault

[Julius Civitatus]

I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what that mean-spirited troll Michael Chertoff said to NBC News:

"The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster," he said on NBC's Today program. "Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part."

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/09/chertoff_blames.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090100533.html

First of all, the evacuation efforts were poor and uncoordinated. People who owned cars could leave. The poor were left behind.

Most people stranded in NOLA did NOT chose that fate (poor, infirm, elderly, etc).

There's no low these trolls in the Bush administration would reach to avoid any responsibility in this mess.

[Arkana]

1. Chertoff...what part does he play in the MisAdministration again?

[Julius Civitatus]

5. Sec. of Homeland Security

Do you feel safer already?

[Arkana]

11. Oh yes. Why do you ask?

By the way, I had my frontal lobe removed via ice pick today.

[comsymp]

7. Reichsmarshall of Fatherland Security

[yojon]

38. Translation: "If they're old or sick or poor, its their fault"

I cant think of anything vile enough to say about this awful creature.

[livetohike]

2. He's never seen poverty or a poverty stricken area obviously

Get a real person in that position. Not a puppet.

[shance]

3. Who is this heartless thug? How can he be in a leadership position?

I cannot believe how ashamed of my country this Administration makes me.

How did they hijack our country? I guess like they did everything else, including New Orleans.

[MADem]

10. He looks a bit like Lenin--Lenin in the box with the wax face, that is

If he were a biker, they'd call him DEATHHEAD or something along those lines. Scary looking fellow!

[AntiCoup2K4]

17. Since you brought Lenin up....

..I read somewhere that the name Chertoff translates in Russian to "of the Devil"

So he's perfect for the Fraudministration of the Antichrist Chimp :evilgrin:

[PDX Bara]

22. Hijack

Daddy bought it for him but at least Daddy has enough of a conscience to appear to be doing something productive now.

[stillcool]

4. and September....

is National Preparedness Month....he had the gall to spout that Bullshit.

[Cobalt Violet]

6. I saw that and couldn't believe it.

Why didn't they call him on that.

[shireen]

8. Sick SOB

Is the Secretary of Homeland Security (of whatever he calls himself) that stupid, or that callous and ignorant?

Come to think of it, that just about describes most of the Bush administration.

[Botany]

9. Chertoff is a walking Corpse ....

..... nobody has bothered to tell him he is dead.

What happened to the post 9/11 spending to make sure that communications
would be up and running?

[1932]

12. NPR played tape of woman essentially saying media cries wolf about storms

all the time. This time there was a wolf.

Also, the storm came and went. The levee broker almost 24 hours later. I don't remember any warnings from the government that theh levees were crap.

If they had said that even a category 4 could bust the dams and flood the city, more people might have left.

And then we have to talk about poverty. How many people wanted to leave but couldn't afford to?

[BR_Parkway]

19. Well, since those levees would have been such a potential target

Well, since those levees would have been such a potential target


for 'terraist' - why the f*/@# didn't Homeland Security already have a plan in place????

With the hurricane, they had days to prepare for this, imagine if 'Al Quaida' (their #3 man, of course) would have set off a bomb against the levee and caused the flooding with no warning to the city of NO to evacuate?

HS and the * misadministration are proving that they've been focused on the wrong damn thing for the past 4 years.

Are we any safer today than we were 4 years ago? HELL NO!

Bush = Failed leadership

[Clark2008]

21. Heh... it's ALWAYS the No. 3 man, isn't it?

Not to make light of this whole horrid situation, but :rofl: @ "No. 3 Man."

[CoffeeCat]

13. I heard on CNN...

...that one in six residents of Buloxi, Mississippi did not own a car.

How in the world does Chertoff expect these people to get out?

Nothing like blaming the victims--especially after they've drown in the rafters of their own homes.

What a complete moron. Is he trying to look like an evil scumbag? You just don't say things like that.

Conversely, the government damn well knew about the hundreds of thousand of poor that had limited means to escape this storm. The government knew a few days that a Cat 5 storm was headed for these areas. The government had resources to help these people before the storm hit and shortly thereafter.

The government has failed these people.

Where is Chertoff's accountability for the government? He's so tough on poor families who had no car to escape the waters--but where's his tough attitude toward an ill-prepared ineffectual government.

What an evil reptile this man is.

[chieftain]

14. W sure has a lot of heartless bastards around him.

They are all for accountability for pregnant teenagers and people who did not have the wherewithal to get out of the way of Katrina, but they don't like finger pointing which shines a bright light their incompetence and mendacity. What sorry excuses for human beings!

[Child_Of_Isis]

15. One college kid said he tried to get out

but couldn't afford the 1000.00 the airlines wanted. Sounds like a bit of price gouging to me.

[greekspeak]

28. Ugh....punch in the stomach. That is low

Clintmax and I flew earlier this year to ROME, and got a hotel room for a week to boot, for 770 each. And it costs a grand to fly the helpless out of that area? Price gouging doesn't even approach it. What airline did this? They are getting a nasty letter from me.

[Child_Of_Isis]

29. I don't know.

His folks finally drove in and got him out. So, it couldn't have been that far. It was definitely price gouging and mostl likely his parents are reporting it. The young lad could have been killed.

[BR_Parkway]

16. Where are the fricking school buses? Underwater! How's that for

'choosing' not to obey that order. Asshat! All you had to do was order the buses into service to get those people out, they couldn't walk far enough to make a difference. What's that? Who was going to pay for the gas? The same damn people who are paying for the search and rescue operation. Me and every other citizen of this country - and we're pretty unanimous - we'd have much rather you spent the money to buy the gas and save lives with it vs spending the gas now trying to track down all the dead bodies.

[flordehinojos]

18. expect nothing different from a man who looks like a mortitian.

PLUS HE TRULY EXEMPLIFIES THE TRUE COMPASSION OF GWB AND OF HIS ADMINISTRATION=ZERO

[Pirate Smile]

20. Did I miss the buses and flights out of town for the poor, tourists,

college students, people without transportation, the sick, the nursing homes filled with people, the hospitals filled with people?

Did the people who went to the Superdome not do what their government told them to do?

What would have happened at the Superdome if all of those in their houses would have actually showed up at the Superdome in the hours before the Hurricane hit?

Didn't the airlines cancel all their flights out of NO stranding thousands because those planes had no one flying to NO?

You have a lot to answer for and if the feds want to start trying to blame the people left in NO, then they better be ready for the blame to be laid right at their door.

[PurityOfEssence]

23. Fine. Then let's just hack 'em up for pet food; they're unfit to live.

Republicans are such cuddly types, aren't they?

Poor people with no transportation can't get out even if they DID have a place to go. Not only that, how well was this warning disseminated? Was there any provision made for those without the means to leave, or are the weak and unfortunate simply expendable?

[Eloriel]

24. Jaw dropping. I'm beyond livid -- NOMINATED

I'm already off the chart with watching the complete spiraling out of control for the simple lack of WATER in NO. This just makes me wanna go postal.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

25. And then he gave us a lecture on Hurricane Preparedness.

And I heard my jaw hit the ground.

What an amazing creature, and I do mean creature. I doubt that he is human.

[Generator]

30. If it looks like a ghoul, talks like a ghoul

I guess it's a ghoul.

[Cha]

26. This michael Jerkoff doesn' t know SHIT

from Shinola..There was no leadership to order the planes down to New Orleans to take the passengers stranded at the airport outta there.

And, many many of the people without resources to leave had no choice. I've heard they were people who chose to stay but they do that with every hurricane. New Orleans needed more funding to prepare for the Really Big One.

[Julius Civitatus]

32. Hundreds of school buses are sunk at the bottom of NOLA flood

Hundreds!!!!

Why didn't FEMA use these PUBLIC RESOURCES to bus people out of the city?
What kind of incompetence does it take to mess this badly, both in preparations for the hurricane, and post-hurricane rescue operations?

Why are people at the top levels at FEMA and Homeland Security not resigning or getting fired right now?

[DemBones DemBones]

27. The poor without cars couldn't leave.

The tourists who didn't get on one of the last flights or rent one of the last rental cars couldn't leave.

The people who were hospitalized couldn't leave. Others couldn't leave because of their medical conditions.

And some people chose to stay.

But let's not confuse all those groups as having "chosen" to stay.

[txaslftist]

31. Und vouldn't ze master race be better if zey don't surfive, mein fuhrer?

[ticapnews]

33. Apparently he just saw "Airplane" and didn't realize it was a comedy...

"They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, let 'em crash."

It was sarcasm, Mr. Secretary, not a suggestion for a course of action.

[calimary]

34. Ahhh... blame the victim, 'eh?

Let me tell you something: I was watching MSNBC (when I wasn't monitoring CNN) just a little bit ago, and they had a phoner with a lady who was marooned at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the French Quarter since last Thursday. You don't stay at a Ritz-Carlton unless you've got bucks. She said none of them who were still stuck there (where conditions were also deteriorating badly) chose to stay. She said she and her husband wanted to leave on Saturday, and by then, the airport had closed and no one - they or anyone else there - could get a flight out.

FURTHERMORE: many of those in the poor sections (who are most badly screwed now) COULD NOT AFFORD TO GET OUT. Couldn't afford gasoline. Maybe didn't even have a car. Maybe were old, sick, or otherwise disabled, or with babies, young children, or pregnancy. Couldn't maneuver physically. They had nowhere to go. And no help.

It's not their fault!!!!!

Since 2001 (when... ummm... a certain Toxic Texan had "taken" office), bush was provided scientific documentation, research, study, and other facts that clearly pointed out how at-risk the levees in New Orleans were, and how badly they needed shoring up AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY OF A CATEGORY-FIVE HURRICANE. He turned his nose up at all of it (probably because it wasn't in the BUY-BULL, Praise the Lowered...) and preferred to squander our money on A) tax cuts for those who needed them the least, and B) his stupid-ass, criminal, deception-reeking war in Iraq.

We, too, knew this was coming in a larger sense. We tried desperately to warn people about this asshole's track record as a CEO - how his "management skills" and "stewardship" drove three oil companies in a row - straight into a ditch. This is how he's "managed" this country.

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[AX10]

35. This administration is just horrible.

Those who stayed behind did so because they are very poor and could not afford to go anywhere else.

[endarkenment]

36. Chertoff to jail. Now. EOM.

[calimary]

37. Works for me, my friend.

Chertoff to jail. bush to jail. cheney to jail. contradicta "NO one could have iMAGined..." to jail. rummy to jail. That pathetic piss-ant FEMA guy to jail. snotty to jail. The WHOLE LOT OF THEM TO JAIL. I was going to say it's hard to know where to start with that. But I take that back. I KNOW where I'd start. DIRECTLY at the TOP. You know - george "no one anticipated the levees would breach" bush.