(It's) very difficult for a family to go through this; you never expect that you will be a part of this. |
[20)] We just learned of the convention center – we being the federal government – today. ... Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today. |
[At the same time, Shays said,] there was a huge void ... became a strict constructionist and didn't want to fill in that void. |
[Floodwaters were still rising as much as 3 inches, or 7.6 centimeters, an hour in parts of New Orleans late Tuesday. In other areas, they were beginning to subside.] I don't want to alarm anyone that New Orleans is filling up like a bowl, ... That isn't happening. |
[He said FEMA mistakenly paid out a handful of undeserving claims and made some other bureaucratic errors. But he said his agency was trying to engage in a difficult balancing act -- practicing judicious oversight while sending payments to needy hurricane victims as fast as possible.] We must never . . . sacrifice that urgency in the pursuit of elusive administrative perfection, ... Our mission to get help quickly to those who desperately need it must take priority, yet be carefully balanced with our obligation to be stewards of taxpayer dollars. . . . FEMA was never stampeded into making any decisions. |
[Last week, Bush, while saying that the initial federal response to the hurricane was] not acceptable, ... Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job. |
[Obama said the] incompetence ... others in the Department of Homeland Security and by this administration was colorblind. |
[Speaking to] Larry King Live ... That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it. |
[TV journalists from ABC’s Ted Koppel to CNN’s Soledad O’Brien and the Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith openly challenged the government’s performance and in some cases, lit into administration officials. Bush compounded the damage by telling ABC’s Diane Sawyer that] I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees ... a heck of a job. |
[With the evacuations firmly underway, recriminations abounded. Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), blamed the city. Mayor Ray Nagin] can order an evacuation, ... the resources to get the poor, elderly or the disabled out. |
a great way to ... empower these hurricane survivors to really start rebuilding their lives. |
a heck of a job. |
All those low-lying areas are just devastated. |
and his allies [recommended] him to succeed Tom Ridge as Homeland Security secretary because of their claim that he helped deliver Florida to President Bush by efficiently responding to the Florida hurricanes. |
And that's one of the things that I think we need to go back and find out, because I was sounding those alarm bells, and to this day I'm incredibly frustrated that we didn't move and could not move things faster. |