2005-08-28 10:56
Was anyone else irritated that the bulk of President Bush’s speech was about the Iraqi constitutional process? I walked in on the speech after he was already going on about the situation in Iraq and sat there watching in disbelief until Mary told me that he had actually talked about Hurricane Katrina in the first part. To me it’s completely ridiculous that he spent one iota of time discussing the situation in Iraq when New Orleans is about to get wiped out.
The country and economy that are President Bush’s primary responsibility are about to take a hit that could approach 100 billion dollars by some accounts. Something like a third of the nation’s oil processing infrastructure is going to be affected by this hurricane. This is not just a problem for the people of the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. This is a situation that we’re all going to feel the effects of for a long time and it’s extremely disappointing to me that he spent time defending his pet project in Iraq in the face of a looming disaster on U.S. soil.
Update: I definitely wasn’t off base. The Lumberyard did the math and here are the sta s:
Entire speech: 1022 words total
Katrina: 203 words
Iraq: 819 words
That’s right, a Category 5 hurricane is poised to hit one of America’s largest cities, and the president only spends exactly 20 percent of his speech on this issue, and 80 percent on Iraq.