Nagin Interview with Russert

Transcript of Nagin's interview with Tim Russert from earlier today.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9240461/

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MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Mayor, if you read the city of New Orleans' comprehensive emergency plan-- and I've read it and I'll show it to you and our viewers--it says very clearly, "Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the mayor of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed. Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation."

It was your responsibility. Where was the planning? Where was the preparation? Where was the execution?

MAYOR NAGIN: The planning was always in getting people to higher ground, getting them to safety. That's what we meant by evacuation. Get them out of their homes, which--most people are under sea level. Get them to a higher ground and then depending upon our state and federal officials to move them out of harm's way after the storm has hit.

MR. RUSSERT: But in July of this year, one month before the hurricane, you cut a public service announcement which said, in effect, "You are on your own." And you have said repeatedly that you never thought an evacuation plan would work. Which is true: whether you would exercise your obligation and duty as mayor or that--and evacuate people, or you believe people were on their own?

MAYOR NAGIN: Well, Tim, you know, we basically wove this incredible tightrope as it is. We were in a position of trying to encourage as many people as possible to leave because we weren't comfortable that we had the resources to move them out of our city. Keep in mind: normal evacuations, we get about 60 percent of the people out of the city of New Orleans. This time we got 80 percent out. We encouraged people to buddy up, churches to take senior citizens and move them to safety, and a lot of them did. And then we would deal with the remaining people that couldn't or wouldn't leave and try and get them to higher ground until safety came.

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I think Nagin looked awful here. I was all for having just about everyone from the PTA in New Orleans up to Bush take the blame for this, but this interview clearly points out what inept leadership Nagin provided.

I love this part regarding Bush:

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Originally Posted by Nagin

I think the president, for some reason, probably did not understand the full magnitude of this catastrophe on the front end.

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Yet from earlier in the interview...

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MR. RUSSERT: Many people point, Mr. Mayor, that on Friday before the hurricane, President Bush declared an impending disaster. And The Houston Chronicle wrote it this way. "[Mayor Nagin's] mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out. City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan." And we've all see this photograph of these submerged school buses. Why did you not declare, order, a mandatory evacuation on Friday, when the president declared an emergency, and have utilized those buses to get people out?

MAYOR NAGIN: You know, Tim, that's one of the things that will be debated. There has never been a catastrophe in the history of New Orleans like this. There has never been any Category 5 storm of this magnitude that has hit New Orleans directly. We did the things that we thought were best based upon the information that we had. Sure, here was lots of buses out there. But guess what? You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome. We barely had enough drivers for that. So sure, we had the assets, but the drivers just weren't available.

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He also contradicts himself quite a few times here and there. I don't understand how this guy ever got elected.

Any thoughts?

You think too highly of elected officials. They are most often scum. This guy is much worse then your typical politician though.

Of course he's going to contradict himself. He messed up bad and now tries to cover up with excuses and lies. Obviously he ain't clever enough to keep it together.

Democracy in action... you get what you vote for.

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Originally Posted by Nagin

You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans.

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Huh? Drivers? There weren't any people left behind who could have driven school buses?

Nice one, Nero.

You notice when I brought all this up in the Whos to blame for Katrina thread it suddenly became very quite ~;)

Maybe this will get them back on track.

http://bojack.org/images/bushvaca.jpg

:grin2:

Who will be there to vote for him? :embarassed:

Every branch of government deserves some responsibility but the State and Federal branch had the reasonable assumption that the local authorities would operate in a halfway competent manner. As has been said, in the US disaster management starts at the local level. :no:

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Originally Posted by Proletariat

Any thoughts?

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We have been here before. The absence of buses was about the first thing I noticed when I watched the evacuation reports on Sunday. I haven't seen Nagin grilled like this until now, and is this is his entire defense it makes him look very bad.

I have no license for bus driving, but I would drive one to save people. :furious3:

Nagin is going down!
This time next year he will organise horse shows. :charge:

And the year after that he will head FEMA! :charge:

I have no license for bus driving, but I would drive one to save people.

Very noble Bartix , but in all probability you wouldn't even make it out of the parking lot .

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Originally Posted by Tribesman

I have no license for bus driving, but I would drive one to save people.

Very noble Bartix , but in all probability you wouldn't even make it out of the parking lot .

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It's not like piloting the space shuttle- there was even an 18yr old who stole a bus, loaded it with people and drove it out of New Orleans. And the mayor couldn't find drivers?

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An 18-year-old also decided to take matters into his own hands and stole an abandoned city school bus and drove storm victims to Texas, according to a CNN report.

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link
Of course, they may prosecute the kid. :dizzy:

I'm reading parts of the interview... and I can't believe Nagin stooped to playing the race card. Also, I don't believe it's mentioned in the interview (who knows why), but I also see that Nagin has already bought himself a new home in Dallas, TX and is enrolling his kids in school there. Doesn't seem very 'mayorly'. Sure, his family needs a place to stay- but buying a home in Dallas?

Driving a school bus requires the complex skill of operating a stick shift. You don't need an astro-physics degree.

Some of the bus drivers when I was in school I'm sure were border line mentally retarded.

I heard Lousiana's almost as politically corrupt as New Jersey...

~:eek:

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

I heard Lousiana's almost as politically corrupt as New Jersey...

~:eek:

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Noo Joyzey, corrupt? Nahh...

Oi! A list of my state's political misdeeds for my convenience...

:help:

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

Oi! A list of my state's political misdeeds for my convenience...

:help:

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Oi gevalt, I may be Dutch but I ain't stoopid. ~D

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Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny

You notice when I brought all this up in the Whos to blame for Katrina thread it suddenly became very quite ~;)

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Did a clip thread not get the attention it deserved? Bad org! Bad org people! Pay attention when Gawain speaks!

I'dve commented but part of his post was a link to something I had linked to about 6 or so posts previously in that thread.

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Did a clip thread not get the attention it deserved? Bad org! Bad org people! Pay attention when Gawain speaks!

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Im sure they paid attention they just were awe struck. ~D

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/...e.html?id=8244

Of course, Russert wasn't going to ask him any questions about Mayor "Hero" skipping town since Nagin's a democrat and black. Good to see New Orleans picked the right guy to run their curropt city deeper into the pit that it was already in. :dizzy2: