Laura Bush just wrapped up a press conference at a sparkling clean and orderly refugee center in Lafayette, La. In a remarkable bit of understatement, she observed: "This doesn't really look like what we're seeing on television."
The first lady acknowledged that relief efforts have "not been adequate" and are "not the kind of response the federal government wants." Still, she said that the people she'd met in her visit -- a mother who had lost a child, a child who had lost a mother -- were "glad" to have found refuge inside Lafayette's Cajundome.
What about the people still stuck in New Orleans? Bush was asked about the fact that most of them are poor and black. That's just the way it is, she said. "This is what happens when there's a natural disaster of this scope," Bush said. "The poorer people are usually in the neighborhoods that are the lowest or the most exposed or the most vulnerable. Their housing is the most vulnerable to natural disaster. And that is just always what happens."
Shares