New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller followed John McCain on his trip to the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which suffered grievously because of Hurricane Katrina, and filed a harshly cynical story to nytimes.com Thursday afternoon -- much of which was removed from the version that eventually appeared on Friday morning's front page.
From Bumiller's Thursday afternoon filing:
Senator John McCain took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared that "never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled."
Mr. McCain, who was on the fourth day of a tour of America's "forgotten places" to try to prove that he is a compassionate Republican, ticked off a long list of mistakes: "There was unqualified people in charge, there was a total misreading of the dimensions of the disaster, there was a failure of communications."
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As reported by NewsBusters