Roscoe Bartlett: “this evening I wanted to spend the first few moments reflecting on the crisis in the gulf. {time} 2300 I have been…”

“this evening I wanted to spend the first few moments reflecting on the crisis in the gulf. {time} 2300 I have been privileged to observe nearly 8 decades of life and I will tell you that this is the only time that I can remember that I was looking at television, coming from our country that seemed really surreal to me. I had to pinch myself to make sure that I was not dreaming, because how could it be that in our country, the United States of America, there were people sitting dead in wheelchairs by the sidewalk, there were people rolled up in sheets dead and others walking by them, there were corpses floating by in the water? There were tens of thousands of people in buildings that they could not leave because water was around them and they had no food, no water, no bathroom facilities and no power. The situation is better now and it is improving; and no one is happy with the response of either the local officials, the State officials or the Federal Government. But, Mr. Speaker, this is not the time to look at what went wrong. Now is the time to make sure that these people are all rescued, who are not already out, to make sure that they all are comfortable in housing, to make sure that their needs are met, that their children are in school. There will come a time that is not now, Mr. Speaker, when we will really take a hard look at what went wrong, not to place blame. Because I really believe, Mr.…”