Blanco endures partisan attacks

WWLTV.com :

U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said Blanco's description of a successful evacuation was 'a story that's not acceptable,' and he compared the deaths caused by Katrina to the U.S. deaths in Iraq, saying the nearly 1,100 Louisiana residents who died was half thenumber of people who have died in the war.

'You lost that many in one day,' Miller said.

Rogers pointed to a city plan that provided for evacuation 72 hours before a hurricane was expected to hit the region, and he asked why Blanco didn't step in earlier if Nagin wasn't ready to issue the mandatory evacuation order.

'Clearly 19 hours is not enough time to effectively evacuate the elderly, the car-less, the special needs population,' he said.

Blanco and Nagin said Louisiana wasn't in hurricane forecasters' possible Katrina path until Saturday and the state didn't have 72 hours to evacuate the region.

'We're not going to sit here and be accused of not doing everything in our power,' Blanco said angrily."
. . . . . .
Blanco said she worried members of Congress were looking for ways to justify not helping Louisiana financially to recover from Katrina and the follow-up blow of Hurricane Rita, which she said together wiped out 205,000 homes.

"Down in Louisiana, our people watch the national news and they hear about something called Katrina fatigue. They hear that Washington is tired of talking about the storm and the problems of Louisiana's people and Mississippi's people ... We don't want your pity. We just need a little help," she said.