From: jason@ab20.larc.nasa.gov (Jason Austin)
Subject: Re: "I can even forgive Bush for Dan Quayle, but not for this."
Reply-To: Jason C. Austin <j.c.austin@larc.nasa.gov>
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 17:47:54 GMT

In article <9208301418.AA16516@MIT.EDU> dks@MIT.EDU (dks) writes:
->  ATLANTA, GEORGIA, U.S.A., 1992 AUG 28 (NB)
->   -- by Dana Blankenhorn
-> 
->  At the end of a "CBS Evening News" broadcast this week, correspondent
->  and Miami resident Bernard Goldberg told anchor Dan Rather "We've gotten
->  very good at covering the suffering of other people.  It's different when
->  it happens to you."  [...]
->  
->  Truer words were seldom spoken. And in the wake of the terrible
->  storm, the time has now come for an evaluation of how well "we" did.
->  
->  First, I'd give a gold medal to Goldberg, Rather, and their TV colleagues
->  for coverage of the disaster [...]
->  
->  The silver medal goes to the area's telecommunications companies [...]
->  
->  The bronze medal goes to the thousands of volunteers [...]
->  
->  Finally, the US government. Bill Clinton may not want to make
->  political hay out of this mess, but someone has to say it. The
->  lack of coordination of volunteers, which should have been done
->  by our government, has been shameful. The National Guard was
->  called out, but did nothing but stand guard over the ruins. We
->  have become experts at moving masses of people thousands of miles
->  for killing other people, or for protecting property. If ever a
->  crisis called for military action, not to kill or protect but to
->  relieve suffering, this was it. One of our own Air Force bases
->  was destroyed, for pity's sake, and the Air Force only let
->  resident-victims in for a few hours to pick through the debris of
->  their lives, kicking them out at 5 PM for fear they might...what?
->  I don't know.
->  
->  It is one thing when suffering in Somalia or Bosnia is ignored
->  for weeks, and people brutalize one another. One can argue that
->  is not our government's problem. But to watch what is happening
->  in South Florida right now, emergency workers begging their
->  government for supplies on television, while the government frets
->  it hasn't gotten the proper paperwork, just turns my stomach. Our
->  citizens have been thousands of points of light in this crisis.
->  But our government, which could have coordinated that light, and
->  which should have used all its might to relieve the suffering,
->  has done too little.
->  
->  I can forgive George Bush a lot of things. Maybe the economy is
->  bad all over the world. Maybe he's never made a mistake in
->  foreign policy, and can't be blamed for extremism within his own
->  party. I can even forgive Dan Quayle. But this I can't forgive.
->  And this I won't forget in November.
->  
->  (Dana Blankenhorn/19920828)
-> 


	I don't think you understand the magnitude what happened.  It
was more than anyone would have expected and the system was just not
prepared.  It's no ones fault when everyone's doing the best they can.
A hindsight argument that Bush should have predicted this and prepared
is ridiculous.  It's not even Bush's job to monitor each state's
emergency preparedness.  This is just another liberal scam to take
advantage of people's pain for political gain.
--
Jason C. Austin
j.c.austin@larc.nasa.gov

Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle