We've got the adequate personnel now who are able to make sure that we have a comprehensive evacuation effort. |
We've got tropical storms and hurricanes brewing in the ocean. |
We've seen them attack in London, for example; we've seen them attack in Spain; we've seen them attack elsewhere, so I think we have to operate on the assumption that they do have some capability and they certainly have the intent. |
what I have uncovered in Ptech connects with some of the things that she has discovered. Sibel is not allowed to disclose content but she can ask me questions. I know some of the things that she mentioned there connect directly to what I discovered. |
What I said was not that we didn't anticipate that there's a possibility the levees will break. What I said was, in this storm, what happened is, the storm passed and passed without the levees breaking on Monday. Tuesday morning, I opened newspapers and saw headlines that said 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet,' which surprised people. What surprised them was that the levee broke overnight and the next day and, in fact, collapsed. That was a surprise. |
Whatever the criticisms and the after action report may be about what was right and what was wrong looking back, what would be a horrible tragedy would be distracting ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred. |
When we remove the water from New Orleans, we're going to uncover people who died hiding in houses, who got caught by the flood, people whose remains will be found in the street, ... It is going to be about as ugly a scene as you can imagine. |
While it is very important to focus an enormous amount of attention and effort on what is going on here, we can't afford to let our guard down in respect to other threats that might happen, |
willingness to take on the vital task of leading FEMA during this challenging time. |
within a matter of days. |
You can be assured that before a deal is approved we put safeguards in place, assurances in place, that make everybody comfortable that we are where we need to be from a national security viewpoint. |
You can't fly helicopters in a hurricane. You can't drive trucks in a hurricane. |
You can't play around with this storm, |
You've got to make sure you've built the entire system so that once you apprehend people, you can hold them and then remove them in a prompt way. |