History has a way of catching up with a man
Here’s a moment I’ll never forget:
It is the morning of April 9, 2003. I am in New Orleans, the intoxicating pre-Katrina New Orleans. I have had a long walk and a breakfast of beignets at Cafe du Monde. I am in the third row waiting for the day’s opening session of an editors’ convention. A large screen has been set up on each side of the podium. CNN is on.
On the screen a crowd has gathered around a large statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. You know the one, and you know what happens next. With the help of U.S. Marines, cheering Iraqis bring down the statue.
The pictures stay up as the speaker came to the lectern. He is a broad-faced, bald-headed man in a dark suit. You know him: Dick Cheney. Many of the editors stand and applaud lustily. The vice president smiles his crooked smile.
Hollywood could not have invented a more triumphant entrance.
The memory of this moment came to mind often as I read the terrific series on Cheney in this week’s Monitor. The series was written for the Washington Post by Jo Becker, a former Monitor reporter, and Barton Gellman, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Bill Platt, the lead editor for world and national news at the Monitor, did a superb job of editing the series down to manageable length. (Even during her Monitor years, Becker was famous for leaving nothing on the cutting-room floor. Incidentally, she has just moved from the Post to the New York Times.)
Even in those heady days of spring 2003, I wasn’t a Cheney fan. In fact, with his penchant for secrecy and his imperial view of the presidency, he struck me as a danger to the republic. I think the Post series confirmed that view. If you missed it, I hope you’ll find it on our website and read it.
And, of course, the morning I listened to Dick Cheney bask in the glow of military victory has quite a different cast to me now. Him, too, I hope, although something tells me a man like him would ever lose a wink over the White House's abject failures in New Orleans and Iraq.
New Orleans - A failure of the White House?
I'm not sure how New Orleans is a failure of the White House.
Louisiana and the City of New Orleans were provided monies by the Congress for the US Army Corps of Engineers for the maintenance of the levee system. These monies were not spent on the levee system, and were redirected towards other programs once they entered the coffers of the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans.
You have to live down in NO to understand they mentality of some of the people there. They look to the Federal Government to have the solution to all their problems. There is very little initiative taken by the government, because they all believe that it's the duty of the federal government to step in and tare care of them.
And please don't tell me there are no jobs there. There are so many jobs available there that are being filled by anyone wanting a job. Wages are good, as employers understand that because of the Hurricane, housing costs have gone up, and it's also hard to hire and retain good workers.
So, please, don't tell me that New Orleans is a failure of the White House. You only have to travel 65 miles to the east to see where that same catastrophe impacted, and the people there have not waited for the government to give them money. They have gotten jobs post-Katrina, worked on their homes, and gotten on with their lives.
New Orleans is not a failure of the White House. New Orleans is a failure of it's own corrupt governement.
Doonesbury
Congress was a mistake right?