Quotes from Katrina
“The nightmare in New Orleans has a lot to tell us about
poverty: the desperate poverty of the city’s African American
population, of course, but also the poverty of the political debate
in the U.S. today. The crisis unfolding before us – dispossession,
looting, people shooting at rescue workers, the president’s
dim response, and now, people dying in front of our eyes outside the
Superdome – rubs our noses in so much that’s wrong in
our country, it’s excruciating to watch. But I’m especially
struck by the inability of our existing political discourse to describe,
let alone to solve, the intractable social problems that have come
together in the flood whose proportions seem almost Biblical.
Joan Walsh, Salon editor-in-chief
“I believe that the recovery and relief operations will cost
up to and exceed $150 billion. FEMA alone will likely require $100
billion in additional funding.”
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid
of Nevada
“It’s going to be awful and its going to wake the nation
up again.”
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on the pending
death toll
“Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans
area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today.”
“So I’m asking Congress, please investigate this now.
Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give
me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot.
Just don’t find me the same idiot.”
Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson
Parish, on CBS’ “The Early Show”
“I have been all over the world. I’ve been
in a lot of Third World countries where people were better off than
the people here are right now. We’ve got 28 miles of coastline
here that’s absolutely destroyed, and the federal government,
they’re not here.”
Retired Air Force Capt. William Bissell
on Monday
“Mississippi is a part of the future of this country
and part of that future is to help you get back up on your feet.”
President Bush to 200 local officials
“We’re most anxious to roll up our sleeves and get to
work. It will take all of us working together to accomplish our
goal. This job is too big for any one group.”
Former President George H. W. Bush
“I won’t be getting inside today unless I get some scuba
gear.”
Jack Rabito, a 61-year-old bar owner
whose one-story home had water lapping at the gutters.
|
|
