If Bush Hadn't Acted, Thousands More Would Have Died

To all of those nitwits who are claiming that President Bush hates black people and wants to see them dead, perhaps it would be helpful to read this AP report from August 28th in which President Bush is credited with the decision to evacuate the city of New Orleans (h/t Little Green Footballs):

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.

Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, the city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.

The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

For the brain-cell impaired, that simply means that President Bush was able to get the governor and mayor off the dime and order the evacuation which probably saved thousands of lives, and certainly kept the aftermath in New Orleans from being many times worse. Today there are thousands of New Orleans residents who escaped both the storm's fury and the cities' problems afterwards because Bush insisted the town be evacuated. By the time the mayor and governor acted, it was already too late to get many people out of the city thanks to canceled flights and a lack of ground transportation (though there were plenty of buses available before the storm).

Don't expect any of his critics to credit him with this decision. They're too busy trying to find a way to justify their stupidity.