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Michael Brown, the widely
criticized former head of FEMA, is back in the news cycle again. Brown first
came to the nation's attention as the bureaucrat who almost single-handedly
bungled the Bush administration's response to Katrina the Storm. As
presidential spokesman Scott McClellan put it, "Sure, there might have been
some other mild bungling committed by other un-named officials, but we're
talking really minor bungling, like Suzie Adams, the presidential admin
assistant who was supposed to call the president if any levees broke while
he was trying his darndest to finish his vacation. Well, it just so happens
that Suzie had a nasty cold when the situation worsened. Really ugly cough
she had. Kind of a hacking cough. You want to stay in bed with a cough like
that. Michael Brown had no such excuse. He's just a bungler."
Lately it seemed as though
Brown's star was on the rise. The month began with the
emergence of a video which showed a large and in-charge FEMA director
urgently briefing a slack-jawed George Bush and Homeland Security Chief
Michael Chertoff about the impending disaster. Ha! Who's the bungler now?
Brown seemed to be vindicated, and he took to the news-chat shows to begin
the rehabilitation of his reputation.
Not so fast, buster. The
all-Republican house panel investigating Katrina the Storm has just released
a
supplemental report which shows that Brown was every bit the bungling
boob that had been suspected all along. Maybe even a criminally negligent
bungling boob. He had ignored the National Response Plan of 2004, thereby
depriving the country of "an opportunity to determine whether the NRP
worked." And it might have! Worse yet,
...the House
reported that Brown "virtually boasted" that he avoided communicating with
Chertoff -- then in office about six months -- "and called directly on the
White House for assistance instead." Brown opposed or never advised the new
secretary to take steps under the response plan, such as declaring an
"incident of national significance," activating a Catastrophic Incident
Annex to speed federal aid, convening an expert Interagency Incident
Management Group or naming a principal federal officer in charge, the report
said.
"Damn, am I guilty or what,"
Brown said this morning in a response to the charges. "I mean, the first
thing you learn in the federal government is to stick to your chain of
command, and like a fool I just skip right over my first level supervisor
like he's some sort of shmuck. I am so sorry. I guess Skeletor and Bush
decided to ignore me as an object lesson. And boy, did I ever need one."
"As for the rest of the
allegations, what can I say? Guilty as charged. I totally forgot about
activating the Catastrophic Incident Annex. Just slipped my mind. And I know
this is going to sound foolish, but for some reason I thought 'Category 5
hurricane headed towards New Orleans' sounded more impressive than 'incident
of national significance'. But give me a break on the Interagency Incident
Management Group meeting. All our good meeting rooms are booked up weeks in
advance. And just try to get some of these muckety-mucks on the phone on a
Friday afternoon."
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