克林顿:布什政府的救灾行动反应迟钝

Bill Clinton: Our government failed those people in the beginning, and, I take another's no dispute about it, and, the 100 percent of the people recognize that, that it was a failure. And I, I personally believe there should be a serious analysis of it. I have my own ideas about what cause it, and, but I don't think we should do it now. I think that, in a few weeks, we should have some sort of Katrina commission¹, should be bipartisan, nonpartisan, whatever. We ought to really look at this, as I always try to, what is the best structure and what are the best kinds of personnel² decisions you can make to be good in emergency management? You know nobody ever thinks about this in a political campaign. It's never discussed in an election. But if it happens to you, it's the most important issue in the world. So we should look at that. Right now, our goal should be on not failing them at second time. Now you, we do have a lot of regular military people here. We have, ah, most government agencies here involved in Louisiana and Mississippi, Alabama, but, ah, I, I think that, at some point we can look into it. Now I think we need to realize there are still buildings, homes and nursing homes and other things, being scoured³ for bodies and live Americans in Louisiana. There are still people without power in Alabama. There are still problems in Mississippi. We need to make sure we don't fail on the second time. And I was honored to be asked to, to try to raise private funds to support that, because, a lot of these people are so desperately⁴ poor, and I think that it's, it's very hard for a lot of Americans to accept it now. We've all seen it on television, but I've spent so much time there all my life. You know, people didn't have much to start with, now losing everything, having to begin again, we have no idea really what their needs will be in the months ahead, which is why I want to try to raise these funds and make sure they go directly to those people. So yes, they were failed at the beginning by their nation, but we don't want to fail at the second time. We've got, we got the departments on the ground, we've got the military on the ground, we've got a chance to do it right now. And we should do it right, and then at an appropriate time, we should analyze⁵ what went wrong and when, what changes should be made. Right now, we need to worry about saving lives, getting people back to some level of normalcy, and then going on and rebuilding.

1 commission   

n.委托，授权，委员会，拥金，回扣，委任状

参考例句：

• The salesman can get commission on everything he sells.这个售货员能得到所售每件货物的佣金。
• The commission is made up of five people,including two women.委员会由五人组成，其中包括两名妇女。

2 personnel   

n.[总称]人员，员工，人事部门

参考例句：

• The personnel are not happy to change these rules.全体工作人员对改变这些规定很不高兴。
• Personnel has lost my tax forms.人事部门把我的税收表格给弄丢了。

3 scoured   

走遍（某地）搜寻（人或物）( scour的过去式和过去分词 )； （用力）刷； 擦净； 擦亮

参考例句：

• We scoured the area for somewhere to pitch our tent. 我们四处查看，想找一个搭帐篷的地方。
• The torrents scoured out a channel down the hill side. 急流沿着山腰冲刷出一条水沟。

4 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

5 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。