Karl Rove Politicizes Hurricane Katrina Response

[ProSense]

Karl Rove Politicizes Hurricane Katrina Response
Dec 5, 2005

For putting politics above saving lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Karl Rove has earned his second spot in our Hall of Shame.


During the Hurricane Katrina crisis, as thousands of people were struggling to survive, Karl Rove had one thing on his mind: How to make President "Bush look decisive." Instead of focusing on how to save the thousands of lives at risk, how to get essential food and water to victims, or what to do with the countless evacuees, Karl Rove and the Bush administration were playing politics.

The Washington Post reports:


White House senior adviser Karl Rove wanted it conveyed that he understood that Blanco was requesting that President Bush federalize the evacuation of New Orleans. The governor should explore legal options to impose martial law "or as close as we can get," Vitter quoted Rove as saying, according to handwritten notes by Terry Ryder, Blanco's executive counsel.



Thus began what one aide called a "full-court press" to compel the first-term governor to yield control of her state National Guard -- a legal, political and personal campaign by White House staff that failed three days later when Blanco rejected the administration's terms, 10 minutes before Bush was to announce them in a Rose Garden news conference, the governor's aides said.



The standoff, illuminated among more than 100,000 pages of documents released Friday by Blanco in response to requests by Senate and House investigators, marks perhaps the clearest single conflict between U.S. and Louisiana officials in the bungled response to New Orleans's surrender to floodwaters and chaos.



<...>



A Blanco aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the people around Bush were trying to maneuver the governor into an unnecessary change intended to make Bush look decisive.


Playing politics with the lives of hurricane survivors is no way to run our country. And neither is playing politics with the identity of an undercover CIA agent.


http://www.dscc.org/news/hallofshame/20051205_roveshame/

[fooj]

1. Shameless rat bastard!

:grr:

[acmavm]

2. There ARE criminal charges involved here. There is a pattern of

corruption involved here. There is an intent to deceive involved here. There is a loss of life involved here, and it was intentional. Not negligent, but intentional.

edit: Someone needs to be put in a federal penitentiary for a long long time.

[FreedomAngel82]

3. Simply amazing

Just when I think they can't stoop any lower they do. Rove is a pure evil sob. I saw a few minutes of the Katrina hearings last night and one woman, who was a community leader, was speaking and kept saying their situation down in NOLA was like a concentration camp and one republican guy (I believe a chairman) kept telling her to not call it that but she didn't back down. His reasoning was because there wasn't gas chambers. Oy. Sounds like things are just as bad there and from what she said too. All these people care about is their image. :mad:

[ProSense]

4. And the s*** keep pouring

"In my opinion, they were hypersensitive. . . . They seemed to feel there was some power play, which I don't think there was," he said. "The fact that it was -- might that have fueled the governor's hypersensitivity? It may have, I don't know."


Hypersenitive? You s***head. A major US city was nearly wipe off the map and you are posturing.