Gulf Oil Spill: Obama's Katrina?

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Not only has the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico been catastrophic for Louisiana where it has come ashore, critics are saying the crisis has also been disastrous for President Barack Obama's image.

According to the The Washington Times , the emergency that has been brewing for 10 days since an explosion of an oil platform, has reached a point that is critical to the Obama White House and its response.

Although the president said his administration would use "every single resource at our disposal" this week, Obama is being criticized for his lack of damage control since he only dispatched key members to the task on Thursday.

Shortly before hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil hit the Louisiana coast on Thursday evening, Obama had just assigned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to get control of the relief effort.

And although President Obama defended his actions on Thursday saying that his administration has been holding daily briefings on the spill, his dealings with the disaster so far have been compared to President George W. Bush's slow response in handling Hurricane Katrina, reports The Boston Herald .

According to the newspaper, with over 168,000 gallons of oil slick leaking into the Gulf per day, there is no time to waste with disaster relief in the area.

It is the federal government that will lead the effort to contain the environmental crisis, unlike Katrina however.

"We are being very aggressive and we are prepared for the worst case," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said at the White House as they are ramping up efforts to get the oil leak under control.

"The response to the BP oil spill began as an emergency search-and-rescue mission by the U.S. Coast Guard and other partners," said Obama's spokesman Nick Shapiro. "Concurrently, command center operations were stood up in the Gulf Coast to begin immediately addressing the environmental impact of the incident."

According to Business Insider , the current oil spill caused by a rig owned by BP, Transocean, is being touted as worse than the Exxon Valdez leak in Alaska, even though it just got upgraded to a national disaster status late this week.

But, the Insider points out that although it is an ecological nightmare of epic proportions, it is not a human disaster, as was the case with Hurricane Katrina.