Bush takes responsibility?

[Alex Handy]

Wow:

http://www.cnn.com/#hellfrezesover


perhaps the chimp is finally becoming a silverback.

[Menzo]

Perhaps someone reminded him that he's not running for re-election and that he can safely man-up.

[Midnight Son]

I about choked on a donut..... but then I considered the source.

[flyinj]

What the hell!

Did CNN get hacked?

[Andrew Mayer]

I hear the words. I'm not holding my breath waiting for any action, as in "response".

Anyone want to play "parse the sentence"?

And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility.

So he has an out...

[MatthewF]

*spews coffee all over monitor*

[Jasper]

He's just playing the "strong father" card, and chumly taking responsibility for other people's failures. Screw that, he needs to aknowledge what he has done wrong.

Moreover, "taking responsibility" doesn't involve talking, it involves doing something. Until he cancels his rich man tax cuts and puts the money back into public spending this is just empty rhetoric. I mean, the man is still trying to kill Social Security, Public Schools, underfund public works and actual security, et al. -- right?

[fire]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

[noun]

How about for him to look like a man doing it, and not an eight-year old being forced to apologize to the teacher by his parents?

[Union Carbide]

Q: What’s George Bush’s position on Roe v. Wade?

A: He really doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.

[Ben Sones]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

Well, actually what I want is to see some indication that he is willing to do something about it. It's good that he's man enough to take the blame... or at least in a tight enough corner that he doesn't really have any choice. But talk is cheap. Bad policy decisions led to this disaster, and without some willingness to recognize that and make changes, all the apologies in the world won't stop this sort of thing from happening again.

[Nick Walter]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

[rtrickey]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

I think it's fair to be suspicious of an admission of fault by an administration that is famous for doing it only when absolutely politically necessary. I think it's not unreasonable to assume that this is more in response to cratering poll numbers than sincere remorse.

[MarchHare]

I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.


I would.

No, I'm not being sarcastic either.

[Alex Handy]

Q: What’s George Bush’s position on Roe v. Wade?

A: He really doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.

Holy shit Carbide. That's fucking hysterical. I thought I was the only one offcolor enough to be joking about New Orleans already. This weekend I reffered to a shopping cart as a New Orleans Stroller, and a flat of bottled water as a Mardi Gras box.

But none of my remarks even touched this one. :twisted:

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

It's not torture, it's interrogation.

[Matthew Gallant]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

It's not torture, it's interrogation.
Indeed. Since he wouldn't be a prisoner of war, it could not legally be called torture, and anyone who did call it that could be sued and/or held without trial.

[Woolen Horde]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

It's not torture, it's interrogation.
Indeed. Since he wouldn't be a prisoner of war, it could not legally be called torture, and anyone who did call it that could be sued.

Actually, that's legally accurate, isn't it? Because, though he is "Commander-in-Chief", he's still a civilian, which means that he's not protected by Geneva as a soldier, right? Ergo, he MUST be an enemy combatant.

[flyinj]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

I think he was being sarcastic.

[Nick Walter]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

I think he was being sarcastic.

He?

[Ben Sones]

Holy shit Carbide. That's fucking hysterical. I thought I was the only one offcolor enough to be joking about New Orleans already. This weekend I reffered to a shopping cart as a New Orleans Stroller, and a flat of bottled water as a Mardi Gras box.

I am ashamed to admit that I have done the same. My wife and I stopped at a sandwich place for lunch, and while we were looking at the menu, I commented that the New Orleans wrap looked good, but then when we ordered, I ended up getting something else. My wife asked why I didn't get the wrap, and I said "It would probably take five days to get here.

[flyinj]

They.

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

Holy shit Carbide. That's fucking hysterical. I thought I was the only one offcolor enough to be joking about New Orleans already. This weekend I reffered to a shopping cart as a New Orleans Stroller, and a flat of bottled water as a Mardi Gras box.

I am ashamed to admit that I have done the same. My wife and I stopped at a sandwich place for lunch, and while we were looking at the menu, I commented that the New Orleans wrap looked good, but then when we ordered, I ended up getting something else. My wife asked why I didn't get the wrap, and I said "It would probably take five days to get here.

It's human nature, I think it took about 12 hours before I heard the first exploding Challenger joke,and that was before the internet age, IIRC.

[flyinj]

They.

[Jasper]

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.
Tortued to death? No. I'd settle for shipping him off to Gitmo (or better, Uzbekistan) and giving him the full battery of treatment that his advocates claim "isn't torture", while he awaits a trial that would be indefinitely postponed.

He's alot more dangerous than anybody they've actually locked up.

[Sean Hargraves]

Geez, aren't you guys ever satisfied? The guy said he was sorry! What more do you want?

You must be new to this forum ;-)

A lot of the crowd here hates Bush with a black passion. I honestly think there are people here who would post in celebration if Bush was kidnapped and tortured to death.

It's not torture, it's interrogation.

No no no. It's called freedom tickling!

[MattKeil]

It's human nature, I think it took about 12 hours before I heard the first exploding Challenger joke,and that was before the internet age, IIRC.

Not even. I heard the "Needs Another Seven Astronauts" joke at recess about an hour after we watched the thing blow up live on TV in fourth grade.

[Jason McCullough]

So he's going to resign, right?

[Brian Rucker]

Good thing he's finally taking responsibility, huh?

WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

"As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

On the day that Chertoff wrote the memo, Bush was in San Diego presiding over a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.

That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.

White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force.
The Chertoff memo indicates that the response to Katrina wasn't left to disaster professionals, but was run out of the White House, said George Haddow, a former deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and the co-author of an emergency management textbook.

"It shows that the president is running the disaster, the White House is running it as opposed to Brown or Chertoff," Haddow said. Brown "is a convenient fall guy. He's not the problem really. The problem is a system that was marginalized."

A former FEMA director under President Reagan expressed shock by the inaction that Chertoff's memo suggested. It showed that Chertoff "does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with - nor does anyone who waits that long," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was FEMA director from 1985-1989.

"Anytime you have a delay in taking action, there's a potential for losing lives," Becton told Knight Ridder. "I have no idea how many lives we're talking about. ... I don't understand why, except that they were inefficient."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12637172.htm