America - Katrina: BBC Finally Gets It Right

It's a rare day that I have anything good to say about the BBC and it took them a long time, but they finally got it right about Katrina.

Notice what is glaringly missing from the BBC article? George Bush is not mentioned once.

Note who the BBC blames for the Katrina failures.

"Some of the actions of the mayor, and even the governor of Louisiana, were highly questionable.

"I don't think that the people that have to make these very difficult decisions realised the magnitude of this particular event, which is frustrating for people like me, because we're very much involved in forecasting.

"We'd been telling people all over the world that New Orleans was a nightmare waiting to happen, and certainly, someone at the state level and the local level have got to be held responsible for that."

[...]

A great many of them believe they were let down by their government, at local and state level, and were left there without food, water, medical help, transport out or security. It is those failings that Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin will have to answer for.

Mr Nagin in particular is accused by some of spending much of the time before Katrina hit trying to work out the legalities of whether he could order a mandatory evacuation, rather than simply ordering people out of the city.

[...]

Governor Blanco was unavailable to talk to Assignment.

But some officials at the Louisiana office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness have two different views of Governor Blanco. While in public they defend her, in private, many are very critical.

One senior official accused her of playing politics throughout the emergency. Another told Assignment that he thought she and her staff had mishandled the crisis from the very start.

How many people will read this as opposed to the propaganda blaming Bush that the BBC put out over the airwaves?

via Scott.
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