FEMA drains small-town N.C. emergency services
Sun Sep 04, 2005 at 01:03:22 PM PDT
The criminally negligent mis-handling of the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina hasn't just caused suffering and frustration in the Gulf-coast, now it's harming communities far and wide...
At the request of the Federal Government, local officials in the Research Triangle Park region of central North Carolina brought together more than 250 emergency medical workers, over 50 ambulances and other medical support assets and put 22 local hospitals on alert to receive multiple planeloads of Gulf coast evacuees.
Those valuable emergency workers, pulled away from their regular duties of serving the emergency needs of the Raleigh-Durham area, sat idle for nearly 6 hours before being dismissed by local officials, who were unable to obtain a straight answer from Federal officials.
Wake's emergency management staff... said the lengthy delay taxed the resources of the many small-town ambulance services that contributed trucks to the effort.
None of this is news to central North Carolina, of course, as local journalists noted FEMA's decay (and Mike Brown's nepotism)
nearly a year ago.
More below the fold...
Customs Snipers & ANG Vipers - My Pet Goat pt2?
Thu May 12, 2005 at 12:07:26 PM PDT
According to White House and Secret Service officials, during yesterday's wildly over-hyped "incursion" by a Cessna 150, there was "no need" to inform the President of any possible threat until nearly 90 minutes after the plane first entered restricted airspace.
According to the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, MSNBC had this to say:
"The White House says the reason is because they were able to determine that the president was not in any danger, and they said that all of the different protocols were in place, it did not require the president's approval. And that's why the president was not informed until 12:50, after he had finished his bike ride.
Why was it so disturbing that it wasn't deemed necessary for the President to be aware of the situation? Because the Government's reactions that immediately were set in place without his knowledge or consent very nearly resulted in the deaths of two foolish, but innocent Pennsylvanians and could have resulted in many more deaths and injuries on the ground, in residential Washington.
More below the fold...
Fallujah Video: U.S. Army Combat Footage
Tue Nov 16, 2004 at 07:22:59 AM PDT
The streets of Fallujah are eerily empty in this video of a company of soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division as they fight block-to-block against resistance fighters hiding amongst the bombed-out buildings.
2-2nd, 1st ID (3:18, 4.8MB, .ASF)
The footage is not graphic, but it does illustrate the extreme violence that our troops are experiencing. These are young kids, younger than me (I'm only 25 - the average age of our soldiers is around 19) and most of them are not emotionally equipped to effectively handle the stress and the carnage they're witnessing -- even if you don't support the mission concept, it's important that we provide support for the young men and women fighting and dying daily in Iraq and around the world.
