| ★阿修羅♪ > 戦争73 > 1251.html ★阿修羅♪ |
|
| Tweet |
カトリーナ危機はブッシュのホワイトハウスを沼地に沈める脅威
これは、オーストラリア紙の記事である。
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0%2C5744%2C16492814%5E601%2C00.html
Katrina crisis threatens to swamp Bush White House
Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent
05sep05
US President George W. Bush is facing a political crisis that could swamp his second-term administration and undermine support for the war in Iraq as the blame game over the Hurricane Katrina disaster starts.
Mr Bush is facing fierce criticism, even within his own party, over his administration's preparation and response to the disaster in New Orleans when levees designed to protect the below-sea-level town failed, as many predicted they would if a storm the size of Katrina swept in.
Yesterday, intensified relief efforts saw the mass evacuation of survivors from the streets of New Orleans.
An eight-hour operation cleared the Superdome football stadium and the convention centre of the thousands of people who had been trapped since the hurricane hit on Monday.
About 10,000 survivors were flown out of the New Orleans airport to cities across the southern US in what has been described as the biggest airlift in the nation's history.
But as people fled the once-vibrant capital, estimates of the death toll were still rising. Louisiana officials yesterday were citing more than 10,000 possible deaths in the city.
Political analysts say the next 10 days are critical for Mr Bush as he attempts to regain lost ground and recover from a perception that the administration underestimated the disaster across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The urgency at the White House was clear at the weekend when Mr Bush's September calendar was torn-up to focus almost solely on the management of the crisis. This included the dramatic cancellation of the much-anticipated visit this week of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The criticism of the Bush administration has been so acute that, in a rare public acknowledgement of problems, Mr Bush admitted at the weekend that mistakes had been made. But he also attempted to shift the blame to state and local authorities.
"The magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," Mr Bush said at a press conference at the White House yesterday. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."
Mr Bush is trying to recover from perceptions that the federal Government has ignored warnings of an impending disaster in New Orleans and, and when it did come, botched the relief efforts.
Bill Frist, prominent Republican leader of the Senate and likely contender for the 2008 Republican presidential ticket, called for a congressional inquiry to see if "any lessons learned during this experience are brought to the forefront". Roy Blunt, a similarly high-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, said: "We have to respond more quickly; we have to respond in the right ways and be sure our priorities are right."
Former speaker of the house and prominent Republican Newt Gingrich told the Associated Press that the Government's performance "puts into question" all the administration's homeland security planning for the past four years. He said Mr Bush should ask former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to take over the response.
Mr Bush is suddenly dealing with an urgent domestic agenda, not the war in Iraq, as the disaster unfolds. Petrol prices are soaring thanks to a cut in petroleum production out of the Gulf Coast and attention is shifting to how the US will cater for an estimated 1million displaced people within its borders.
While refugees asked how the US could successfully invade a country but not drop adequate supplies to thousands of dehydrated refugees in one of the nation's most prominent cities, newspaper editorials were lashing the administration for not focusing enough on domestic issues such as poverty and inequality.
Inspired by the stark images of poor African Americans stranded and dying in New Orleans, The Boston Globe called for a "War on Poverty", while the New York Times said Mr Bush's tax cutting for the rich had to stop.
After touring the Gulf Coast at the weekend, Mr Bush is due to conduct another visit in the early hours of tomorrow morning, Australian time.
Other cabinet members are also travelling to the region, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The mishandling of the crisis is evident particularly in the public comments from Michael Brown, the head of the administration's Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Live on CNN late last week he admitted he had only just been told that 20,000 people were waiting to be rescued outside New Orleans's convention centre, which had already featured prominently on the cable networks with harrowing images of refugees screaming for food and water along with footage of corpses and children suffering from extreme dehydration.
Mr Bush and head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff have also come under attack for saying no one predicted the catastrophe, when in fact it has been talked about for years.
But there is anger and embarrassment in the US over the lack of preparedness for disastrous floods in the historic city, which sits below sea level.
Experts had warned that any hurricane as strong as Katrina could cause the century-old levees protecting the city to fail.
Meanwhile, mass evacuations of more than 20,000 occurred out of New Orleans at the weekend as long-awaited help in the form of thousands of troops National Guard, as well as food and water, finally arrived.
It is widely acknowledged Hurricane Katrina - with the destruction and evacuation of an entire city, together with the obliteration of more than 350,000 homes over an area the size of the south island of New Zealand, to say nothing for the appalling loss of life - will stand as the worst disaster ever witnessed in the US.
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。