Republicans don't want an Independent Katrina investigation

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The call for a bipartisan commission failed in a partisan vote.

All the present Democrats plus Jeffords voted for it
All the present Republicans voted against it.
It failed 44-54, with Vitter and Corzine absent.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00229#position


What do the Republicans have to hide? Time to vote every single last Republican out.

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Just like the Democrats who would rather have congressmen on the comittee instead of experts in the field. I can think of two guys in John Breaux and Rudy Guiliani who would be perfect people to chair a bipartisan committee. Instead, the Democrats want people like Biden or Kennedy to sit on the commission and turn it into a circus.

What part of bi-partisan commission don't you understand? The Democrats might pick Breaux.

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Bush has already called for an executive level investigation.  A congressional investigation would be duplication of effort and an unnecessary expense.

Further, the riders to stock it with senators sunk it.  If they had instead been appointing people not currently in an elected office, such as Giuliani and the head of FEMA under Clinton (I cannot remember his name right now), it would have had a shot at actual support.

To the democrats who want the senate investigation:  Would you support it if it were staffed by Santorum, Coburn, Bunning and other people your party likes to vilify?

Sorry that I'm not going to be impressed with a non-independent commission full of Bush political hacks like Brown that caused the problem in the first place. You have the foxes guarding the hen house.

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Whatever, it's real.

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WOW Maybe JFRAUD has found "Memogate, Part II."

No, that was the Washington Post article claiming that Blanco took her time declaring a disaster. They printed a retraction, but the damage has been done.

Anyways, the image in question here is on Yahoo pictures. Yes, I thought it was fake when I first saw it too, until I realized that it was on Yahoo pictures.

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Yeah, I'm not questioning the authenticity of the picture; I'm just stating the obvious: he didn't write the whole thing.

OK, if you want to insist that he's incapable of writing that.

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Republicans want to bury their heads in the sand. Here's a comment I made about the evacuation before the hurricane hit. If I could figure out it was going to be a problem, why didn't Bush?

If it lingers at Catagory 3 or above directly over New Orleans, the Gulf will basically reclaim New Orleans. The sad thing is there are perhaps 100,000 people who aren't leaving there. Perhaps they can't afford to escape. Too bad our country doesn't have real evacuation systems.

Most people who don't leave during hurricanes do so either because they do not understand the threat, believe they can ride it out, or are simply stupid.  This is not to say that there are not individuals who would fall in the category of being unable to evacuate - but even in those cases the Superdome has been made available and is probably the safest place in southeast Louisiana.  Of course you will use any reason, even tragedy, to disparage the United States.  I do wish you and your kind would evacuate the country.  If you are too poor to do so, I am sure we could raise the money among the conservatives, moderates, and resposnible liberals on this board.

People like you would like to attack me for whatever I say.  Yeah, I'm a terrible person for pointing out that some people are unable to evacuate because they are too poor.

Clearly you will use any reason to attack me.

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Indeed, a complete and total waste of time, money, resources, staffing, energy, and many other things. I mean what do they really want to do here, investigate it to find out if it was really a hurricane?

The Democrats want to try to put on another show, that's all.

Under their proposal, yes.  Remember, they originally only wanted to investigate the federal response to the storm, and not the whole response on all levels.  It was only after Bush called for a full independent investigation into the whole response that the language changed.  But still, it's not an independent investigation when there are Congressmen on the panel.  The only way to have a truly indenpendent investigation, and one that will offer useful feedback on how to improve the response structure, is to have outside experts sit on the panel, review all the material, and then make their response.  Anything else, and it's just showboating and spinning.

Do you really believe that Bush would create an indepented commission that wasn't just filled with political hacks like Brown?

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Do you really believe that Bush would create an indepented commission that wasn't just filled with political hacks like Brown?

If had to, yes.  However, I highly doubt that Bush would be the person picking the experts.  That would be the task of the Congress.  Of course, that still leaves it wide open for the Congressmen to pick their own hacks on both sides of the aisle.  At least the politicians won't be involved with the actual investigation, so that part will at least be much more independent and productive.

You seem to have a lot of trust in Bush here. Remember, he's the guy who decided that a failed horse laywer would be a good head of FEMA. Why oppose a real independent investigation, not an investigation that would be IINO (Independent In Name Only, like yourself)?

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You seem to have a lot of trust in Bush here. Remember, he's the guy who decided that a failed horse laywer would be a good head of FEMA.

Last time I checked, people were singing the praises of FEMA last year with the multiple responses to Florida following their hurricanes.  How quickly people forget.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not opposing a real independent investigation.  In fact, I'm calling for one.  The only way it will be independent is if there are no politicians involved but rather made up of professionals that actually understand this stuff, and can make realistic recommendations that will benefit everyone in the future, rather than politicians who pretend.  You can't get more independent than that.

But yet you oppose this commission? Are you afraid that it would overshadow Bush's commission? There's no reason that we couldn't have 2.