They still don't get it. The director of the Federal Emergency (Mis)Management Agency, Mike Brown ( a former estate lawyer before working at FEMA) was interviewed by CNN today:
"Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands. 'Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,' Brown told CNN. 'I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,' he said."Maybe it's just me, but I think he just made a judgment. I mean, there was a mandatory evacuation, right? These people chose not to leave. They chose to go to the Superdome. Hmmm. Let's see what else he had to say:
Asked later on CNN how he could blame the victims, many of whom could not flee the storm because they had no transportation or were too frail to evacuate on their own, Brown said he was not blaming anyone. 'Now is not the time to be blaming,' Brown said. 'Now is the time to recognize that whether they chose to evacuate or chose not to evacuate, we have to help them.'This is all very slick, and I might add, very lawyerly. He's right about one thing; now isn't the time to be blaming. But he is, of course. Unless you're trying to cover your own ass, why kick these people when they're down?
After all, it's not like everyone didn't expect those levees to fail.
Oh, wait. President Bush did say today, on Good Morning America, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." See the video here.
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