I am so upset, I had to write again. Didn't save the first, but here's the second:
I am a writer, and use words in my work daily. Yet, I cannot find the words to express my frustration and anger at this administration and its criminally inadequate response to the devastation and human suffering in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Three days, and we still haven't gotten water and food to the stranded? Three days, and there's no command-and-control structure in place? Three days, and hospitals are still not evacuated, while nearby hospitals are waiting with empty beds?
The national director of FEMA said today that he didn't know there were 3,000 people stranded at the convention center until a reporter told him. He had to learn it from a reporter? No wonder the local emergency director called FEMA's response a national disgrace.
We can't blame the government for the hurricane -- that's true. But I am absolutely enraged at this administration for their utter lack of preparation and responsiveness. And don't call it politics; it's policies. Take a policy of gutting the federal government (the Norquist effect), mix in massive tax cuts and an unnecessary war, throw in cutbacks to FEMA and a director with no background, and this is what you get: a federal government completely incapable of taking care of its citizens in their time of greatest need.
I am so angry. This did not have to be this way.