Reply #38: Consider Haley Barbour's response to Wolf Blitzer

[ProSense]

BLITZER: So Bobby Jindal, your colleague from Louisiana, we just heard him. He's passionate. He's deeply concerned, for obvious reasons, about what's going on. If this "top kill" procedure, Governor, doesn't work, how worried are you that this will expand and Mississippi could find itself in the same place as Louisiana?

BARBOUR: Well, there's no question that we're at risk. And the tides and the winds and -- have blessed us. And Louisiana, of course, is much closer to the well site than we are. And we feel terrible that we are trying to help them any way we can and any resources that we can make available to them.

But if this "top kill" does not work and the well continues to spew out oil, it actually, as you said earlier, it could come out at a faster rate, because in the process, they may blow it more wide open, so to speak.

We are prepared in Mississippi. We have a multi-layered defense to defend our shores. We've got hundreds of vessels that are ready to go.

And -- but, yes, the best thing that could happen to everybody is if today we stop the amount of oil that is streaming out and then focus on cleaning up what's already out there.

BLITZER: When you say you're prepared for that worst case scenario, what are you doing?

BARBOUR: Well, we have about 750 vessels that are -- that we're in the process of training. Most of them have been trained now, with their crews, to fight the oil off our barrier islands, then to try to prevent it from getting between the passes, between the barrier islands, keep from getting into the Mississippi Sound.

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I don't for a minute believe Barbour wouldn't be calling for federal help, but at the same time why isn't Jindal marshalling his state's resources?