Obama's Administration on the oil spill

Posted by Kromey at 7:35pm Jun 15 '10
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Despite all the grandstanding about cleaning up the Gulf oil spill being a top priority, Obama and his administration are playing a dangerously cavalier game and have so far turned down offers of aid from 13 countries, including offers from the Dutch who have far more expertise and specialized equipment for dealing with exactly what we have here. And besides cleaning up the oil itself, who better to build dikes to protect our coasts than the Dutch?

Non-PC jokes aside, the Obama administration has cited the Jones Act as prohibiting non-US ships, some of which are specially designed to clean up oil spills, from helping in the spill. But for all his faults, President Bush waived the Jones Act to allow international ships to aid in recovery efforts there; I guess steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that we do need help is certainly a change we can believe in, though.

U.S. not accepting foreign help on oil spill

A month later the administration reversed course, though:

The US government lacks key equipment it needs to battle the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and is seeking international help, the US Coast Guard said on Tuesday.

Coast Guard official Thad Allen, who is in charge of the government's efforts, told reporters that skimmers to help siphon the oil off the surface of the water are most needed now.

I guess late is better than never, but how much could the scale of this disaster have been reduced if Obama had shoved aside his ego and admitted from the get-go that we need help? The liberals were certainly quick to point fingers at Bush for not responding fast enough to Katrina, so who's going to point the fingers at Obama for delaying more than a month before admitting that we need help to contain and clean up this mess?