Forum.RttP{Michael Steele, African American Republican candidate or oreo?}

According to our government, the US Military has the ability to deliver MRE's (Emergency Military Rations of Food and Water) to just about anywhere in the world within 24 hours. Had someone in a leadership position in the federal government given the order before Katrina hit, or even if they were completely unprepared beforehand and gave the order when it hit, assistance could have begun to arrive the next day, not FIVE days later. No one starving on their rooftops, no old people and babies dead on the streets, surrounding the very place they were told to go to find safety.

The local government at least did its job in terms of letting all those people know where to go (The Convention Center), where thanks to the federal goverment they had to wait 120 hours for assistance in 100 degree weather with no food or water. Seems obvious to me who dropped the ball there.

Now did Bush slow the Katrina effort because the majority of the inhabitants are black? Of course not, and to say that he directly intended to hurt black people is just stupid. However, had the area Katrina hit been politically consequential in terms of having Bush voters or even potential Republican voters, someone in the White House would have brought it to Bush's attention immediately (not because they want to kill their political enemies, obviously, but because helping their political allies was an incentive for them to become proactive). So there's no malice here, no conscious intent to starve poor people or black people or democrats or anyone. But it is criminal negligence that resulted in unnecessary deaths of America that WERE preventable, given the military's ability to deliver emergency rations within 24 hours.

I'm not saying any of this because I hate Bush (I do), or because I think he is by far the worst President in US history (he is). I don't care if this happened under the watch of Clinton, or JFK, or Abraham Lincoln for that matter, that level of criminal negligence is clearly an impeachable offense. We live in a very strange time in this country where apathy has completely taken over, it began since Watergate as people slowing stopped paying attention to what goes on in government, and after 9/11 most Americans just put a flag on their car and shut off their brains. The saddest irony is that they forgot what that flag actually stands for.