After days of blaming the federal officials for not responding quickly enough to the Hurricane Katrina crisis, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin praised President Bush on Monday - and charged that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco had delayed federal rescue efforts by 24-hours.
"I'm so happy that the president came down here," Nagin said of Bush's Friday visit to Louisiana in an interview with CNN. "He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action."
But Nagin had harsh words for his state's leaders, telling CNN: "What the state was doing, I don't frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate."
The New Orleans Democrat said he urged Bush to meet privately with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco during the visit. The meeting took place aboard Air Force One, he said.
After reviewing the crisis with Gov. Blanco, Bush summoned Nagin for a private chat - where, according to Nagin, Bush explained: "Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor. I said . . . I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision."
Reacting to the governor's footdragging, Nagin lamented: "It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out."
"It didn't happen, and more people died."
This doesn't sound like the Nagin of last Thursday night, when he spoke on WWL.
Interview Transcript
"I don't know whether it's the governor's problem, or it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get ... on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now," Nagin said.
"They thinking small, man, and this is a major, major deal," he said.
"Get off your asses and let's do something."
Nagin seems to have gained some control since then. Could it be the photos that show HE failed to utitilize all resources available to him to aid in the evacuation have something to do with that?
Hundreds of buses sit in floodwaters.
Less than a mile from the Superdome, 146 buses were engulfed by the flooding.
I saw Nagin interivewed by Harry Smith this morning on CBS.
If we are to believe his timeline, it will probably take "three weeks to clear the water. Another couple of weeks to clear the debris. And six to eight weeks to get the electricity going," Nagin said.
"What happened here should never, ever happen again in this country. And I think we ought to do some analysis, and not just play the blame game," Nagin said. "Too many people suffered both during the storm, but way too many suffered after. And they suffered and they died. And it didn't have to happen."
"This type of catastrophic event requires quick action, and the bureaucracy did not allow that to happen," Nagin added.
The bottom line is that Nagin failed the people of his city. There is no question about it.
The bottom line is that Governor Kathleen Blanco failed to authorize federal help in a timely fashion.
The bottom line is that the media failed to give the entire story to the American people.
Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Carl Quintanilla, Chris Matthews, Ted Koppel, Anderson Cooper, and Tim Russert, and the New York Times, to name just a few, acted as propaganda tools for the radical anti-Bush crowd.
The bottom line is people died because of Nagin and Blanco.
That's not playing the blame game. That's stating the facts.
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