Chaos In The Gulf

The NY Times has a long story panning the poor coordination of the oil spill battle in the Gulf:

Efforts to Repel Gulf Oil Spill Are Described as Chaotic
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

...From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.

“The present system is not working,” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said Thursday at a hearing in Washington devoted to assessing the spill and the response. Oil had just entered Florida waters, Senator Nelson said, adding that no one was notified at either the state or local level, a failure of communication that echoed Mr. Bonano’s story and countless others along the Gulf Coast.

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

I don't know how the Commander-in-Chief can stick that exclusively on BP.  But I know he'll try!

The Coast Guard gets dragged in:

A 1999 Coast Guard report recommended that a mechanical response — using equipment like boom, skimmers and absorbent materials largely marshaled by boat and from land — should be increased by as much as 25 percent.

But over the next several years, lobbyists for oil companies pushed to keep the existing standard in place and emphasized the use of chemical dispersant.

...

In rules formally published last August, the Coast Guard effectively overruled its 1999 report, declining to require the substantial increase in the amount of mechanical response equipment.

However, in comments published along with the rules, the Coast Guard said that it “recognizes that the amount of mechanical recovery equipment is still inadequate to address the worst-case threat.”

So the Coast Guard finally scuttled the plan in August 2009?  Clearly, that will be blamed on Bush.

Your government in action:

The main problems, many here say, have been sluggish response times and a consistent impression that no one is in charge.

Reports of oil reaching shore have been made days before any vessels were seen in the area. After squalls, booms have ended up tangled like spaghetti on the shores of wildlife-rich islands, only to remain like that for days with no response workers in sight.

...

Requests to the response operation, no matter how small, have required approval, a process that state and local officials said could take days or weeks. Some requests were never answered at all. 

The Times article does not include in its chaos the long delay before the Feds began accepting offers of foreign assistance. Over to the WaPo:

Four weeks after the nation's worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

"We'll let BP decide on what expertise they do need," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19. "We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments."

That time has come.

In the past week, the United States submitted its second request to the European Union for any specialized equipment to contain the oil now seeping onto the Gulf of Mexico's marshes and beaches, and it accepted Canada's offer of 9,842 feet of boom. The government is soliciting additional boom and skimmers from nearly two dozen countries and international organizations.

In late May, the administration accepted Mexico's offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway.

The Dutch sweeping technology had been offered three days into this debacle.

COVERING FIRE FOR OBAMA:  Anne Applebaum of the WaPo provides cover for a helpless (but never hapless!) President Obama:

The oil spill isn't Obama's Katrina

...It is an ecological disaster. It is a economic nightmare. And there is absolutely nothing that the American president can do about it. Nothing at all.

Here is the hard truth: The U.S. government does not possess a secret method for capping oil leaks.

For heaven's sake - capping the leak would be great, but responding sensibly to the leak would be helpful, too.  Or was George Bush expected to stop the wind from blowing?  No, actually, he was expected to coordinate the response:

Other than proximity to the Louisiana coast, this catastrophe has nothing in common with Hurricane Katrina: That was an unstoppable natural disaster that turned into a human tragedy because of an inadequate government response. This is just an unstoppable disaster, period. It will be a human tragedy precisely because no government response is possible.

"No response is possible"?  Wow.

Not satisfied with having nailed down the gold medal for Dumb, Ms. Appelbaum bids for silver and bronze as well:

Given that he cannot stop the oil from flowing, why has President Obama decided to act as if he can? And given that he is totally reliant on BP to save the fish and the birds of the Gulf of Mexico, why has he started pretending otherwise -- why is he, in his own words, looking for someone's "ass to kick"?

Let's see - officially, BP is operating under the supervision of the Coast Guard and every major decision is approved by the Administration.  For example, it was Team Obama, not BP, that initially rejected the Dutch offer of oil sweeping equipment which could have saved some birds.

No one expects Obama to dive to 5,000 feet and personally seal the leaking well.  But it is within the President's power to rationalize the lines of command to deliver a coherent, cogent response.  My goodness, even Rachel Maddow has figured that out, almost:

Part of the problem, the paper reports, is that it's not clear whose in charge, the Coast Guard or BP.

Not quite - per Obama, the Coast Guard and the Administration are unequivocally in charge:

But make no mistake: BP is operating at our direction. Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance.

Or from another perspective, why is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wasting his time ordering the Louisiana National Guard to build sand barriers? Hasn't he been informed that "no government response is possible"?

Comments

[Buford Gooch]

Ditherer in Chief.

[Danube of Thought]

"...a consistent impression that no one is in charge."

Apparently our planet will have to begin to heal on its own.

[bgates]

He keeps coming up with new ways to disappoint. If I'd been asked on Inauguration Day to come up with Presidential duties that I thought he'd handle least badly, a big oil company causing an environmental disaster at the exact location where Katrina hit would have been at the top of the list.

I can't quite tell whether this is massive (unprecedented!) incompetence, and/or whether he deliberately wants to let this get worse so he can use it to further damage the country. It seems safer to assume the latter.

[daddy]

Chaos in the Gulf!!!

So which one is Obama, http://phelan.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/max86.jpg "> Maxwell Smart, or ">http://www.iment.com/maida/tv/gs/getsmartimages/hymie-200.jpg"> Hymie The Robot?

[Danube of Thought]

Wow. Just had a pretty sharp earthquake here. 5.7 out near Ocotillo. Initial reports blame Bush.

[daddy]

DoT,

Interesting. Had one here in Taipei about 6 hours back (5.4)

I'm on the 11th floor and had the whole building shaking about 10-15 seconds. Didn't post it as the link wasn't up yet, but it is now so here they are: ">http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/"> Latest Earthquakes in the World - Past 7 days

[Extraneus]

I can't quite tell whether this is massive (unprecedented!) incompetence, and/or whether he deliberately wants to let this get worse so he can use it to further damage the country. It seems safer to assume the latter.

Yup. And it also seems like a safe bet to assume that when he first heard about it, there were high-fives in the Oval Office. "Ha ha! Now we have the f'n oil industry right where we want 'em! And the worse this gets, the better it is!"

It didn't dawn on them until sometime later that people might expect Obama to save the coasts. And they obviously weren't prepared for that kind of organizing.

[Jane]

I can't quite tell whether this is massive (unprecedented!) incompetence, and/or whether he deliberately wants to let this get worse so he can use it to further damage the country. It seems safer to assume the latter.

It seems pretty clear that the only criteria this administration uses for action is political criteria. The dithering is caused by figuring out what will benefit the administration politically. Nothing else matters. Perhaps they were trying to extort campaign donations from the boom manufacturers, thus the delay.

He's Blago on steroids.

[Wuzzagrunt]

If only there were some way to predict, before the election, that a guy with zero executive experience and a 15 minute political career, would lack the necessary skills to direct the federal response to a crisis. How could anyone have known?

[How does he justify himself when he finally figures shit out?]

Lending more support, Jane, to the belief that Fitz the Pure Blind Knight stopped a trainwreck in Illinois. Had the ears listened another week we'd have a different President already.
==============

[M. Report]

It is an oil spill, not the end of the world;
This is why the Won can afford to treat it as
a fortuitous crisis to be exploited, as can the
loyal opposition; The US cannot afford to have
the usual incompetents in charge as it heads
into a future filled with existential threats.

The November elections should do more than put
some newcomers in Congress; It should put the
current critters in Congress, and TPTB who put
them there, and pull their strings, on notice
that the people are watching, they are mad as
Hell, and they are not going to put up with
politics as usual any more.

[narciso]

Fitz charged Libby, when she have gone after Armitage, he used Radler against Black, he has sat on Rezko's larger allegations, just like Nicole covered up for Allen, in the Stevens matter

[One with pistolas.]

Special Prosecutor needs a Special Prosecutor.
===========

[Jim Miller]

Obama should have gotten some good advice earlier; in particular, he should have called this former vice president.

[Cross your fingers, not your relief wells.]

With any luck, Jim, Cheney's got a handle on when the relief wells can strike, and is advising Sarah of the timing.
=============

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

This oil leak has been FUBAR, and is a SNAFU. In addition, it will become the icon for clusterf***k.

I can scarcely imagine a better legacy for His Travesty

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Just heard one CEO call this Admin effort "Political Beer Pong".

What ever happened to Teh Once's statement that this was/is his responsibility? Lost in the ether.

[Rick Ballard]

The first relief well should be functioning by August 10th with the second well about two weeks behind. I've seen estimates that the reservoir may be 2-2.5 billion barrels which leads me to wonder why a few more wells aren't being drilled in order ensure pressure relief and establish a production center.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Engineering logic has nothing to do with Rick when your only experience is all politics all the time.

[Walter Sobchak]

Wuzzagrunt wins:

"If only there were some way to predict, before the election, that a guy with zero executive experience and a 15 minute political career, would lack the necessary skills to direct the federal response to a crisis. How could anyone have known?"

A favorite theme here: The media was too high from inhaling its own gasses to be able to report the obvious.

[Jay Rosen]

Watching from here in Canada, I have to say that it looks to me as if everything this president does, every decision he makes, is designed to strike another blow against the Great Experiment. You folks better wake up and purge Obama and his fellow Marxists at the very first opportunity.

I'm pulling for America, and I'm encouraged by the Tea Party movement - even went to one last summer with my wife and we loved every minute of it.

Remember in November. For the sake of your freedoms, remember in November.

[Alan Little]

This gulf thing is going to turn global very quickly I think. We need to stop bickering and stop this leak. I am pulling for America, too!