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Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
Now stfu libs!

Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders
Sep 13 12:13 PM US/Eastern
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer



WASHINGTON

President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush replied.

He said he wanted to know both what went wrong and what went right.

As for blunders in the federal response, "I'm not going to defend the process going in," Bush said. "I am going to defend the people saving lives."

He praised relief workers at all levels. "I want people in America to understand how hard people worked to save lives down there," he said.

Bush spoke after R. David Paulison, the new acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pledged to intensify efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors now in shelters.
 

DRB

unemployed bum
Oct 24, 2002
15,242
0
Watchin' you. Writing it all down.
What does taking responsibility mean? A guy gets a girl pregnant and he accepts repsonsiblity. What does that mean? Yeah I did it. Or yeah I did it and here is what I'm going to do to own up to it. Oh and actually do what you say. In most cases its an empty appeal meant to curry some level of forgiveness without actually apologizing. He should have taken responsibility before it happened. Now its just clean up. And that goes for all of them.

In the end it will all fall into a mess of partisan politics with no meaningful change being implemented, ie 9-11.
 

dan-o

Turbo Monkey
Jun 30, 2004
6,499
2,805
STFU? He admits that we can't handle a predicted emergency and we need to STFU? The guys incompetent.
 

I Are Baboon

The Full Dopey
Aug 6, 2001
32,383
9,289
MTB New England
I hate to admit this, but I don't see anything BAD about Bush taking responsibility here. He could have ducked around it, not taken the blame, and pointed the finger at other agencies (*cough cough IRAQ INTELLIGENCE cough cough*), but he isn't.

I guess if you fock up enough times, eventually you have to take some responsibility.
 

ohio

The Fresno Kid
Nov 26, 2001
6,649
23
SF, CA
I Are Baboon said:
I hate to admit this, but I don't see anything BAD about Bush taking responsibility here. He could have ducked around it, not taken the blame, and pointed the finger at other agencies (*cough cough IRAQ INTELLIGENCE cough cough*), but he isn't.

I guess if you fock up enough times, eventually you have to take some responsibility.
I agree that it's an important step. I was quite surprised to hear it, and certainly glad. In my mind it removes the "evil" from a man I thought of as "evil and incompetent."

Now, as I've mentioned before, if he wants to prove his competence, he won't just admit the failure, he will explain why it won't happen again. He will demonstrate and understanding of what went wrong, and will take action to ensure that he doesn't make the same mistake twice.

Repeating "we're going to fix this" does not count as fixing it or even taking action to fix it. I want concrete actions. I want specific steps. Responsibility is MORE than just accountability.
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
2,448
Hypernormality
ohio said:
I agree that it's an important step. I was quite surprised to hear it, and certainly glad. In my mind it removes the "evil" from a man I thought of as "evil and incompetent."
There's still the small matter of that invasion. This kind of makes it worse. He's 'sorry' for screwing over his own people but Arabs and soldiers don't matter.
 

Ciaran

Fear my banana
Apr 5, 2004
9,839
15
So Cal
Bush doesn't take responsibility, he takes credit.


He wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't going to somehow benefit him.
 

Ridemonkey

This is not an active account
Sep 18, 2002
4,108
1
Toronto, Canada
You guys are giving him too much credit. He's not opting to take responsibility, his people have instructed him to apologize thinking he can regain some minority support if he makes a small concession.

He probably just didn't know what a hurricane was at the time.
 

blt2ride

Turbo Monkey
May 25, 2005
2,333
0
Chatsworth
Ridemonkey said:
You guys are giving him too much credit. He's not opting to take responsibility, his people have instructed him to apologize thinking he can regain some minority support if he makes a small concession.

He probably just didn't know what a hurricane was at the time.

Exactly, at this point it's all about damage control. Let's face it, Bush assumed that the folks he put in charge would jump into action. He had no idea what was going on; he was giving everyone, including Brown, accolades for the job they had done...