President Obama was facing a growing backlash last night over the U.S. government's slow response to the oil spill disaster. Ten days after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and 210,000 gallons a day started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, a massive slick hit America's southern coastline. As a massive operation was launched to try to protect threatened wildlife, critics compared Mr Obama's belated attempts to contain the catastrophe to George W Bush's dithering over Hurricane Katrina.He has no plans to visit the threatened coast, where sea turtles, whales, dolphins, manatee, brown pelicans and hundreds of species of fish and shorebirds are among the animals endangered. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O'Hara faced questions across the U.S. TV networks yesterday about whether the government has done enough to push BP to plug the underwater leaks and protect the coast. And Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, Louisiana, the state where the leading edge of the slick reached yesterday, said he didn't know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the government or BP. 'They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive,' he said (Daily Mail)
