WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Bush, seeking to stem criticism that a slow
federal response has contributed to needless misery, promised stunned
and suffering residents up and down the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast
that he would fix what's "not going exactly right" in the storm's
aftermath.
Ron Edmonds / AP Photo
President Bush, facing blistering criticism for his
administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday, "The
results are not acceptable," and pledged to bolster relief efforts
with a personal trip to the Gulf Coast.
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After returning to Washington late Friday from nearly seven hours
touring some of the most devastated areas of Alabama, Mississippi and
Louisiana, Bush took several more steps in his effort to meet that
pledge and recapture the leadership kudos he won after the 2001
terrorist attacks.
He immediately signed a $10.5 billion disaster aid package passed by
Congress - an amount he repeatedly called "just the beginning" of
federal expenditures for storm relief. He issued a memorandum saying
Hurricane Katrina had created a "severe energy supply interruption" that
could damage the national economy, and formally authorized a drawdown of
crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
He also prepared for a rare live radio address on the storm response
from the Rose Garden on Saturday morning.
The White House was already planning for a return trip on Monday,
scrapping Bush's plans for a Labor Day speech in Maryland in favor of
stops in undisclosed parts of the storm-affected region. And aides
arranged for a hurricane briefing to be the first item on Bush's daily
agenda for the foreseeable future.
"I'm not going to forget what I've seen," the president said in New
Orleans as he ended his tour. "I understand the devastation requires
more than one day's attention."
Describing that devastation in Mississippi and elsewhere along the coast
that was battered by Katrina's enormous winds, Bush said it was "as if
the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you
can imagine."
Indeed, he walked, drove or flew by incredible destruction - enormous
casino barges flung like toys onto dry land, houses collapsed on
themselves like decks of cards, staircases leading nowhere, and
thousands of only cement squares and piles of debris where buildings
used to be.
In New Orleans, where the worst problems were caused by massive flooding
from breaches in the city's levees, Bush talked about the suffering of
the people who have gone days without rescue, food, water or medicine -
some dying in the process.
But what he experienced of the crisis there was mostly by air. He
avoided the lawless parts of New Orleans where looting has become common
and snipers have fired on hospital evacuations, visiting only the
airport and the ruptured 17th Street levee where huge sandbags were
being dropped by helicopter into the water flowing through the 300-foot
breach.
Bush heard plenty, however, during more than an hour of meetings aboard
his plane with state and local politicians about why it is taking so
long to relieve the misery of so many people in New Orleans who have
been living in squalor without the necessities of life.
"He heard some things he didn't want to believe at first," said Sen.
Mary Landrieu, D-La. "The president is starting to grasp the magnitude
of the situation."
Four days after Katrina killed hundreds if not thousands, Republicans
joined Democrats in shaking their heads.
"If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across
the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a
nuclear or biological attack?" asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
a Republican.
Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts called the government's
response "an embarrassment."
The criticism stung for a president who won widespread praise for his
handling of the terrorist attacks four years ago - and who already is
suffering sagging approval ratings in the polls over the Iraq war and
gasoline prices that were high even before Katrina wreaked havoc on Gulf
of Mexico operations.
Hoping to turn the tide of opinion in his favor, Bush spoke four times
publicly on Friday.
"The results are not acceptable," he declared at the beginning of the
day.
Along the way, the president promised to restore order in New Orleans,
rush food and medicine to the needy and provide temporary housing to
those who have lost their homes. Rescuing those still trapped would take
a matter of days, he said, and restoring electricity to the millions
without it would come within weeks.
"We're going to clean all this mess up," he said. "My attitude is, if
it's not going exactly right, we're going to make it go exactly right."
Longer term - a process that he predicted would take years - Bush
pledged to see New Orleans and Mississippi and the entire region rebuilt.
"I understand it seems dark right now," he said. "But by working
together and pulling together and capturing that great spirit of our
country, a great city will rise again, a great state will be vibrant."
