Reuters photo
National Guard troops, something on fire. Iraq? No, New Orleans (pictured yesterday), thanks to the Bush regime's failure, once again, to protect the American people from a disaster about which the Bush regime had been warned. Even Republican former Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked, "There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why." I know why, and I suspect that Powell knows, too.
The wingnut quiet after the storm
I don't troll the wingnut blogs because reading wingnuts is like taking a trip to hell, replete with lying demons trying to scratch your eyes out if you get close enough to them, so I don't know what the wingnut bloggers (wingbloggers?) are saying these days, but the wingnuts in general seem to be curiously silent lately.
They were ripping on Cindy Sheehan and then an even angrier woman, Katrina, hit within the Gulf Coast states.
And suddenly, the wingnuts are uncharacteristically quiet.
That's because there's not much room for wingnut spin here.
Either the United States government adequately prepared for Hurricane Katrina or it didn't.
It didn't.
Reports The Associated Press:
The top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support rescuers, internal documents show.
Part of the mission, according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press, was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Acknowledging that such a move would take two days, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.
Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."
...Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public...."
And it turns out that I would be more qualified to head FEMA than is Brown, who was appointed to his post only because (shock! suprise!) he is a Bush crony. Reports Reuters [my comments in brackets]:
Top U.S. disaster official Michael Brown, under fire over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, cited prior emergency-management experience in an official biography but his duties were "more like an intern," Time magazine reported.
Brown's biography on the Federal Emergency Management Agency Web site says he had once served as an "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight," and a White House news release in 2001 said Brown had worked for the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, in the 1970s "overseeing the emergency-services division."
However, a city spokeswoman told the magazine Brown had actually worked as "an assistant to the city manager."
"The assistant is more like an intern," Claudia Deakins told the magazine. "Department heads did not report to him." Time posted the article on its Web site late [yesterday].
Brown, a lawyer, was appointed as FEMA's general counsel in 2001 and became head of the agency in 2003. The work in Edmond is the only previous disaster-related experience cited in the biographies. Brown served as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association before taking the FEMA job.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat [in name only], had cited Brown's Edmond experience as "particularly useful" for FEMA during a hearing in 2002. [Yeah, heading FEMA is the logical next step for the head of the International Arabian Horse Association. If the Democratic Party wants to survive, it really needs to disgorge itself of clueless fucking Repugnican ass lickers like Lieberman.]
Critics, including some Republicans, have blasted Brown for delays and missteps in the federal government's response to Katrina's deadly and devastating assault on New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf Coast last week. Some have demanded his ouster.
Bush last week gave Brown a word of support, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
[Nice that Bush can be so glib -- calling Brown "Brownie" -- in the wake of the deaths of thousands of Americans that he could have prevented but did not prevent, much like how he did not do anything to prevent 9/11 even though he had received, the previous month, a presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." And "Brownie" is doing as good a job as the nation's top disaster official as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been doing in Iraq. Bush has delusions of grandeur, thinking that if he simply pronounces someone competent, then he or she is competent.]
This week, Bush put the U.S. Coast Guard's chief of staff in charge of the federal recovery effort in New Orleans and gave Vice President Dick Cheney the job of cutting through bureaucratic delays.
The Washington Post reported [today] that five of eight top FEMA officials had come to their jobs with virtually no experience in handling disasters. The agency's top three leaders, including Brown, had ties to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or the White House advance operation. [Emphasis mine.]
Former Edmond city manager Bill Dashner recalled for Time that Brown had worked for him as an administrative assistant while attending Central State University.
"Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt," Dashner told Time. [Loyalty, punctuality, dressing up -- common Repugnican qualities, but those qualities didn't help the people of New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast states very much, did they?]
In response to the Time report, FEMA issued a statement that took issue with elements related to an unofficial biography, and described his job in Edmond as "assistant to the city manager."
Brown "remains focused on helping Americans through the worst natural disaster in history," FEMA said.
Oh, Brown is doing his job -- now. That's mighty fucking comforting.
The fact of the matter is that George W. Bush and the other members of his cabal for the past five years have been much more concerned with rewarding their fellow right-wing frat buds -- especially those who helped out in Gee Dubya's two presidential campaigns -- with war-profiteering contracts in Iraq and with federal governmental posts for which they're not qualified than they have been concerned about doing anything for the American people.
They have viewed the federal government as a vehicle with which to further enrich themselves, not as a vehicle with which to improve the lives of all Americans.
They got away with failing to protect the United States against the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because they were able to label all dissenters and questioners as unpatriotic terrorist sympathizers. You were either with us or against us/for the terrorists, they proclaimed.
But Hurricane Katrina is not a person or a group of people who can be said to hate freedom and democracy and SUVs and mega-malls. Bush has yet (to my knowledge...) proclaimed that you're either with us or you're with Katrina.
Katrina was a cold, hard fact of nature against which the Bush regime's propaganda machine has been pretty fucking powerless.
Here's an RVS Weather Alert that Brown and the rest of the members of the Bush regime hopefully will ignore, too:
Another storm is going to sweep the United States in November 2006, and and even bigger storm is going to hit in November 2008, ridding us of those in the U.S. government who only enrich themselves and who leave the least of the rest of us to fend for themselves.
6:17:51 AM 
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