Letter: Lagging response, selfish policies a national disgrace

Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005 | 9:10 a.m.

Everyone knew days in advance that the hurricane was headed toward the Gulf Coast and the likely devastation to New Orleans. The president sat by and made no preparations for a worst-case scenario. The president didn't even return to Washington until days after the disaster.

How is it possible, four years after 9/11, that this administration was so ill prepared to handle a national emergency? Where was the Army and National Guard? The administration has left the homeland lacking in human resources for emergencies in favor of his $200 billion-plus war in Iraq.

The president stated that he has zero tolerance for looters -- including those taking only food and water. It seemed he had no trouble tolerating the sight of American babies dying in the streets of New Orleans because of a lack of food, water and shelter in sweltering weather! I wonder if he would be so quick to pontificate if his family were facing the desperate situation of survival that some of those families were experiencing. It is truly amazing that a man who expresses so much concern about life in the womb seemed oblivious to the reality of living, breathing babies dying in front of us on television.

I am a 59-year-old white, educated, Catholic woman of comfortable means and I cannot believe what I have witnessed. The images looked like a Third World country, not the United States of America, the richest nation on the planet. This has truly become a national disgrace. The incompetence and selfish priorities of this administration have been revealed to the nation and the world.

DINA GERBER