"I'm confident in my management style. I'm a delegator because I trust the people I've asked to join the team. I'm willing to delegate. That makes it easier to be president."
G.W. Bush, December 16, 2003

"And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong,"
G.W. Bush. September 13, 2005

Kos: Katrina Timeline

9.14.2005 DeLay declares 'victory' in war on budget fat, By Amy Fagan and Stephen Dinan, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

"This is hardly a well-oiled machine," said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. "There's a lot of fat to trim. ... I wonder if we've been serving in the same Congress."
American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene said federal spending already was "spiraling out of control" before Katrina, and conservatives are "increasingly losing faith in the president and the Republican leadership in Congress."
"Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression," he said

Will the Dems be slammed for not pushing hard enough to keep the civil service protections for the department that Bush insisted on scrapping -- thus easing the way for the conversion of the FEMA into the best little GOP whorehouse in Washington?

Any serious taking of responsibility entails probing the error--its roots, its dimensions. In Bush's case, this would entail:

• acknowledging that he routinely appointed crony incompetents to run FEMA and other federal agencies;
• acknowledging that this was the wrong thing to do;
• acknowledging that many terrible things happened as a result;
• acknowledging that he was otherwise occupied when the safety of America and Americans was at stake.

Anything less is pure blather

Back on September 7th, Rep. John Conyers wrote to the Congressional Research Service (one of the few parts of the government that can legitimately be called non-partisan) and asked them to review the record to see whether Gov. Blanco of Louisiana took the necessary steps in a timely fashion to secure federal assistance in the face of hurricane Katrina.
The report came back yesterday. Yes, she did. Read it yourself.

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.
But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Who's in charge?

This is a description rather than a direct quote. And the specifics of just what was said matter. But if the account is accurate, the contention seems to be that an US Army policy -- presumably intended for warzones -- trumps the decision of a US federal court on American soil. And I don't think you've got to be much of a wild-eyed civil libertarian to find that a tad problematic.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

9.13.2005 "imminent domain?" Stephen Pizzo:

Look who's getting off easy in 'rebuilding' the Big Easy: the same companies that have been getting fat off rebuilding Iraq.

But hey, New Orleans is one helluva franchise -- a real potential gold mine. That is, if the winners can just clean the damn place up. All the French Quarter needs is a bit of buffing up by Disney Corp. to transform it into a "family friendly" vacation destination. But those poor areas need a total do-over. Imagine hundreds of thousands of quaint yuppie condos, walking distance to the French Quarter. Man alive, a developer could get $300,000 a one-bedroom for one of those puppies. They can almost smell it, especially now that the former "bad elements" are hundreds of miles away cooling their brown heels in tincan houses in some Georgia pine forest.

So, yes, the president, responding to a request from a group of Republicans, did move quickly to undercut workers’ wages in Louisiana and Mississippi, and for good measure in areas in Alabama and Florida (beats me how he slipped in those last two states). He invoked emergency powers yesterday to suspend the Davis Bacon Act—effectively a wage cut for tens of thousands of workers in those four states (see his statement below) who might otherwise be paid the area’s prevailing wage on any rebuilding projects funded by federal dollars.

This is an attack on the middle-class, no more misguided then the tax cuts favoring the top one percent of the population. Aside from being anti-union (though this isn’t just a union wage because all workers benefit from prevailing wage laws), this is just stupid economics. Let me get this straight: you’ve got a devastated area, which will need to have people, once they return home, able to spend money to generate economic activity. So, the first thing you do is attack a program that helps blue-collar workers earn a middle-class wage and puts money in peoples' pockets.

9.13.2005 Kein Drum:

The fact is, conservatives haven't won much of anything in the last 10 years except a PR triumph. Their biggest successes have been on taxes — a Pyrrhic victory at best without corresponding spending cuts — and in the court system, which hasn't actually delivered much real world benefit. Plus they have a war in Iraq, for whatever that's worth. Public opinion simply hasn't allowed them anything more.

Conservatives since Reagan have managed to slow down the march of liberalism — something that was probably inevitable after the 60s anyway — but PR triumphalism aside, that's about it. In reality, today's politics is reminiscent of World War I: dozens of divisions squaring off for bloody and horrific battles that end up doing nothing except clawing back a few yards of territory in one direction or the other. It looks and sounds horrible, but when the smoke clears the landscape hasn't altered much. Even the most conservative president of the past 50 years hasn't been able to change that.

9.12.2005 "F.D.A. Had Report of Short Circuit in Heart Devices -- Months before the Food and Drug Administration issued a safety alert in June about problems with Guidant Corporation heart devices, the agency received a report from the company showing that some of those units were short-circuiting, agency records obtained by The New York Times show."

9.12.2005 "Confusion at Crunch Time", LA Times, 11 pages

9.11.2005 Josh Marshall:

To assist with the recovery and disposition of the victims of Katrina, FEMA has hired Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Management, a Houston-based company which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), another Houston-based corporation, which bills itself as the "dominant leader in the North American death care industry."

SCI is not only closely associated with the president (which is not surprising since the company is based in Houston), they were also at the center of what is probably the best-known scandal during Bush's six years as governor of Texas: the so-called 'funeralgate' case.

Given his role in the Homeland Security chain of command, Michael Brown must have had a reasonably high security clearance for his job. But to get even the most basic security clearance requires a very extensive background check, in which FBI investigators go back through your resume, talk to past employers, look up old addresses, etc.
...
There's some similar sort of background check when you get your senate confirmation. So, did all these fibs come out in that background check? And if so, why didn't they raise any red flags, let alone scuttle his nomination?

9.11.2005 "How Bush Blew It", Evan Thomas, Newsweek

It's also possible that after at least four years of more or less constant crisis, Bush and his team are numb.

The failure of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina worked like a power blackout. Problems cascaded and compounded; each mistake made the next mistake worse.
...
Late last week, Bush was, by some accounts, down and angry. But another Bush aide described the atmosphere inside the White House as "strangely surreal and almost detached." At one meeting described by this insider, officials were oddly self-congratulatory, perhaps in an effort to buck each other up. Life inside a bunker can be strange, especially in defeat.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City.

9.11.2005 "In the beginning there was the Flying Spaghetti Monster"

In an open letter to the Kansas Board of Education in July, Mr Henderson wrote: "I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

"I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster."

He ends his letter with the telling comment: "I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

9.11.2005 Ben Adler:

But, within reason, liberals don't believe there's much of a correlation between a person's private lack of virtue and his or her public behavior. (Liberals usually draw the line at victimless crimes.) On the level of principle, liberals have no problem with a strong advocate of public education sending her own children to private school (though, practically speaking, it might make the advocate less effective were it to become public knowledge). In order to make a hypocrisy charge stick against liberals, you'd have to find someone promising one thing then doing another in a way that affects a significant number of people -- e.g., an anti-war candidate who funds a secret war in some far-off country. That's why liberals tend to focus more on George W. Bush's broken promise to be a uniter, or to be fiscally responsible than, say, his years as a problem drinker.

A recurrent motif of the administration's post-Katrina damage control has been “who could have known?” Well, doesn’t anybody in this administration read?

There were reports raising red flags before 9/11, and no one appears to have read them. There were reports raising red flags about WMD and the dangers of occupying Iraq, and no one appears to have read them. And there were reports raising red flags about New Orleans and the dangers of crumbling levees, and no one appears to have read those, either.

That’s three strikes. And, as a baseball fan, the president knows -- even without reading -- that “three strikes and you’re out”.

9.7.2005 Wonkette: "Chertoff's Reading Habits"

On Sunday, DHS chief Michael Chertoff told "Meet the Press's" Tim Russert that one reason for the delay in getting federal aid to Katrina victims was that "everyone" thought the crisis had passed when the storm left: "I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'" We're wondering what papers the Chertoff household gets, because these are the headlines that greeted most people Tuesday morning: (Pictures of front pages here)

9.10.2005 "Rebuild what?"

9.10.2005 "A Shameful Proclamation"

On Thursday, President Bush issued a proclamation suspending the law that requires employers to pay the locally prevailing wage to construction workers on federally financed projects. The suspension applies to parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

By any standard of human decency, condemning many already poor and now bereft people to subpar wages - thus perpetuating their poverty - is unacceptable. It is also bad for the economy.
...
Republicans have long been trying to repeal the prevailing wage law on the grounds that the regulations are expensive and bureaucratic; weakening it was even part of the Republican Party platform in 1996 and 2000. Now, in a time of searing need, the party wants to achieve by fiat what it couldn't achieve through the normal democratic process.
...
In a letter this week to Mr. Bush urging him to suspend the law, 35 Republican representatives noted approvingly that Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and the elder George Bush had all suspended the law during "emergencies." For the record, Mr. Roosevelt suspended it for two weeks in 1934, to make time to clear up contradictions between it and another law. Mr. Nixon suspended it for six weeks in 1971 as part of his misbegotten attempt to control spiraling inflation. And Mr. Bush (President G.H.W. Bush) did so after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, two weeks before he was defeated by Bill Clinton, who quickly reinstated it after assuming the presidency.

9.10.2005 "Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals"

9.9.2005 "So if in fact Michael Brown padded his resume to get his job at FEMA, he committed a felony."

9.9.2005 "Relief crisis leads to lockout"

9.9.2005 "Police Trapped Thousands in New Orleans"
See also "The Single Worst Decision"

9.9.2005 "Human brains enjoy ongoing evolution"

9.8.2005 As Waters Recede, Watch Who Cleans Up

Do you think it's a coincidence that Dick Cheney and the disaster lobby showed up to assess the damage the same day Congress is pushing a "very impressive" $50 billion through without any consideration for contractor accountability?

Cheney's in Mississippi while Joe Allbaugh, the former head of FEMA is helping clients obtain disaster relief contracts in Louisiana, the Washington Post reported today.

Among Allbaugh's many clients is Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, which got its first cleanup order last week, under an ongoing $500 million Navy contract that it renewed in 2004, before Allbaugh joined the team and started rolling in the Hallibacon.

9.9.2005 US Rep. Nancy Pelosi to Kyra Phillips: " ... if you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll."

9.9.2005 Colin Powell:

When you look at those who weren't able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own.
These are people who dont have credit cards; only one in ten families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing --- but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor," he said.

9.7.2005 Brian Williams:

"the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history."

9.9.2005 "Inside FEMA - Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience"

9.9.2005 " Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash"

9.9.2005 "Political Issues Snarled Plans for Military Help After Hurricane"

As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana's governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush's senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor
...
The debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

The New Republic:

When Brown left the IAHA four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer -- a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn't attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA.

Hilzoy: "Appointing Brown to be head of FEMA was unforgivable, and people have paid for his appointment with their lives."

The American public is highly critical of President Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Two-in-three Americans (67%) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28% think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush's overall job approval rating has slipped to 40% and his disapproval rating has climbed to 52%, among the highest for his presidency. Uncharacteristically, the president's ratings have slipped the most among his core constituents ­ Republicans and conservatives.

A grand jury has indicted a political action committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and a Texas business group in connection with 2002 legislative campaign contributions.

The five felony indictments against the two groups were made public Thursday. Neither DeLay nor any individuals with the business group has been charged with any wrongdoing.

9.7.2005 "Money Flowed to Questionable Projects"

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.
Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.
...
In fact, barge traffic on the canal had been plummeting since 1994, but the Corps left that data out of its study. And barges have continued to avoid the canal since the study was finished, even though they are visiting the port in increased numbers.

New poll. 38% Approve, 58% disapprove of Bush's handling of Katrina.
There could be pictures of Bush with a goat, and 38% would approve, as long as it wasn't a gay goat.

Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency — who is under fire for the agency's slow response to the flooding — said Wednesday that scores of police and volunteer firefighters from around the nation, as well as trucks loaded with donated water, were even now being prevented from entering New Orleans while troops conduct house-to-house searches.

"They can't just yet," Brown said during a briefing in Baton Rouge. "There is going to come this natural time when we will release this floodgate of cops and firefighters who want to help. It's the same for anyone who wants to volunteer — we have over 50,000 offers of donations from the private sector. It has to be coordinated in such a way that it helps."
...
"I'm asking Congress, please don't send any more money to FEMA," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a staunch critic of the agency. "Send it directly to the local officials." But White House officials said $50 billion of the new aid package, supplementing $10.5 billion approved last week, would be routed to FEMA.
...
At the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the federal agency would hand out debit cards worth $2,000 to every adult victim of Katrina.

( NYT Headline calls this a "Bipartisan Inquiry") but the aricle goes on to say:

The decision by House and Senate Republican leaders to press forward with a rare bicameral investigation reflected an intense push to quell the furor surrounding the hurricane relief effort and respond to worries by members of their own party that majority Republicans were suffering politically.
...
Mr. Frist and Mr. Hastert would not respond to questions about how the committee would work, but their spokesmen said it would have subpoena power and would be structured like standing committees that are controlled by the majority party. They said the panel was expected to be the primary investigative vehicle and would preclude federal officials involved in the relief effort from being summoned before numerous panels.
...
"An investigation of the Republican administration by a Republican-controlled Congress is like having a pitcher call his own balls and strikes," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

9.6.2005 "Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded"

9.6.2005 AP:

At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had "absolutely no credentials."
She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown.
"He said 'Why would I do that?'" Pelosi said.
"'I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'"

"Oblivious, in denial, dangerous," she added.

9.2.2005 "Bush visit halts food delivery"

9.6.05 "Top FEMA leaders short on experience"

Rhode and Altshuler worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations, which arranges Bush's travel and scripts his appearances.

"URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005"

On Saturday night, Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday, he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. ( Picture Here)

Bush was fully briefed about the severity of the storm. He knew what was coming. Yet he decided to stay on vacation, eat cake, and play guitar while the gulf coast drowned.

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas. (Kos has the picture)

9.5.2005 Barbara Bush:

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
...
In many ways, the unfolding public relations campaign reflects the style Mr. Rove has brought to the political campaigns he has run for Mr. Bush. For example, administration officials who went on television on Sunday were instructed to avoid getting drawn into exchanges about the problems of the past week, and to turn the discussion to what the government is doing now
...
In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats.

Who's Newsweek's source?

9.4.2005 Josh Marshall: "As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said."

Had Blanco still not declared a state of emergency as late as yesterday?

On the state of Louisiana website you can find this letter Gov. Blanco sent to President Bush on August 28th, that was last Sunday, just on the eve of the hurricane's landfall. (Here's the PDF and here is a text transcription.) Basically the letter is a laundry list of requests for aid and assistance from the federal government, invoking various laws, and so forth.

Some of the key passages include ...

Under the provisions of [the relevant federal law], I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing ... In response to the situation I have taken appropriate action under State law and directed the execution of the State Emergency Plan on August 26, 2005 in accordance with Section 501 (a) of the Stafford Act. A State of Emergency has been issued for the State in order to support the evacuations of the coastal areas in accordance with our State Evacuation Plan ... Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster ...

The referenced state declaration of emergency was apparently declared on August 26th, that is, the Friday before landfall.

Perhaps if a few of these reporters would spend a few days on New Orleans duty they'd understand the depths of depravity of the invididuals who are lying to them, and remember those little bits of journalistic ethics which tell them you shouldn't grant anonymity to people who are feeding you full of shit, especially when they're feeding you shit for the sole purpose of attacking others.

9.5.2005 "Doctors Hamstrung in Relief Efforts" By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer

Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital marooned in rural Mississippi.

"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said in a phone interview.

CNN: The North Carolina mobile hospital stranded in Mississippi was developed through the Office of Homeland Security after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties.

Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery in the field, including open-chest and abdominal operations.

It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers, which as of Sunday afternoon was parked on a gravel lot 70 miles north of New Orleans because Louisiana officials for several days would not let them deploy to the flooded city, Rich said.

MEMO TO BUSH: FIRE MICHAEL BROWN Michelle Malkin

This is not the time to give a weak performer the benefit of the doubt. The FEMA director's role in the ongoing recovery effort is too important to be entrusted to a clueless political hack with such poor judgment.

Rather than praise Michael Brown, Bush should fire him.

"This Committee must review all the decisions taken to oversee the implementation of Decree no. 3 since its publication in 2004 and must take control of all monies belonging to the trade unions and prevent them from dispensing any such monies.

We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.
...
Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

UPDATE: Good God. Laura Rozen passes along the following report from a Dutch reader:

There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.

This goes beyond stage management. This is criminal.

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."
...
The procedures for what to do when the inevitable disaster hit were also subjected to a bureaucratic overhaul, still unfinished, by the department. Indeed, just last Tuesday, as New Orleans was drowning and DHS officials were still hours away from invoking the department's highest crisis status for the catastrophe, some department contractors found an important e-mail in their inboxes.

Attached were two documents -- one more than 400 pages long -- that spelled out in numbing, acronym-filled detail the planned "national preparedness goal." The checklist, called a Universal Task List, appeared to cover every eventuality in a disaster, from the need to handle evacuations to speedy urban search and rescue to circulating "prompt, accurate and useful" emergency information. Even animal health and "fatality management" were covered.

But the documents were not a menu for action in the devastated Gulf Coast. They were drafts, not slated for approval and release until October, more than four years after 9/11.

9.3.2005 "Daley 'shocked' as feds reject aid"

9.3.2005 America Blog:

"The Dept of Homeland Security Web site says the agency will assume "primary responsibility" for any "natural disaster or large-scale emergency." So much for Bush and his surrogates claiming that the buck stops with the mayors and governors of the affected areas.

Hurricane Katrina has gone from being a natural disaster to a national disaster. Everyone must agree that the situation in New Orleans represents a failure of the federal government to meet its most basic function of effectively and promptly providing safety and security for the American people. The federal government failed to plan for and immediately respond to this crisis.

The failure stems from a chronic and intentional diversion of resources for which the Bush Administration must accept responsibility. For years, it has been known that a devastating hurricane could hit the Gulf Coast. In 2001, FEMA labeled a hurricane striking New Orleans as one of the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing the United States. The Bush Administration underfunded several critical programs which would have mitigated the scope of this disaster. The Bush Administration has continually proposed budgets which cut funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, disaster mitigation programs, and hurricane protections for Louisiana's coast. In addition, the fact that thousands of National Guard soldiers from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are in Iraq has prevented them from being available in sufficient numbers to carry out their primary mission.

It's instructive, on that score, to compare the current response to Hurricane Katrina (in which the Three Stooges apparently have seized control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a bloodless coup) with the administration's efforts on behalf of the voters of Florida following last year's triple storms -- Charley, Frances and Ivan.

True, the 2004 disasters didn't completely take down a major metropolitan area by turning its urban center into a bowl of shit soup. But the difference in the federal goverment's performance before, during and after those storms had passed is stlll rather striking. It appears there's something special about years divisible by two -- and particularly every other year divisible by two -- that can inspire amazing feats of bureaucratic energy and competence, at least in large, populous swing states.

I think the genius of the people who are working here, the genius of the people of FEMA, the people in the National Guard, the people in the Coast Guard is, they have been marvelously adaptable. They have brought, for example, airlift capabilities and air rescue capabilities to bear in a way that I don't think we've ever seen in this country before. And so I think it is a source of tremendous pride to me to work with people who have pulled off this really exceptional response.

Instead of acting like a Bush lapdog and gratefully accepting his role as Co-Disaster-Fund-Raiser-in-Chief, imagine the impact Clinton would have had if he had stepped up and made the connection between the increase in poverty and the stagnation in incomes for the fifth straight year and the post-storm suffering among the poor in New Orleans. Or imagine if he had spoken out about how the GOP's beloved new bankruptcy bill is going to further the misery of those ruined by Hurricane Katrina.

9.3.2005 DAVID BROOKS:

I think it is a huge reaction we are about to see. I mean, first of all, they violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield
...
This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.
Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.
...
Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his politics quite often.
...
Look at him today earlier in the program, this is how Mark Shields must feel looking at him, I'm angry at the guy and maybe it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are furious right now.

9.3.2005

Josh Marshall:

Here's a question several readers have now asked me.Where's Dick Cheney? I think it's a genuinely good question. And not just a leading one.
...
Most people who've written in are I think getting at why he hasn't made some public statement or visit to the affected regions.
But even beyond that, the more basic question: where is he?

Maybe he's been working on contracts:

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

The Pentagon's top investigator has resigned amid accusations that he stonewalled inquiries into senior Bush administration officials suspected of wrongdoing.

Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz told staffers this week that he intended to resign as of Sept. 9 to take a job with the parent company of Blackwater USA, a defense contractor.

The resignation comes after Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) sent Schmitz several letters this summer informing him that he was the focus of a congressional inquiry into whether he had blocked two criminal investigations last year.

9.3.2005 "The Rebellion of the Talking Heads -- Newscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling." By Jack Shafer

9.3.2005 Andrew Sullivan:

The reason I'm mad as hell over Katrina is precisely because I'm a conservative and this kind of thing is exactly what government is for. Bush in this sense is not now and never has been a conservative. A man who explodes government spending but can't run a war or organize basic civil defense is simply a fiscally reckless incompetent. If this were a parliamentary system, we'd have a vote of no confidence. Instead we have three years of more peril.

I predicted that they would be good soldiers and insulate Bush against charges that the levees weren't finished, and indeed I woke up to Al Naomi saying just that on NPR. And General Strock from HQ had to be brought in to do the real damage control: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. "Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place." (from Chi Trib). But there are really TWO questions that must be answered:
...
The question of levee adequacy breaks down at least into "was it at spec height?" [yes!] and "was it structurally sound to spec?" [oops!]. Because of the nature of the levee failure (not overtopped, but burst), watch for Corp HQ to focus on the first question (which pins the deaths on nature), and ignore the second (which might pin the deaths on budget decisions).
Read the rest

As New Orleans descended into anarchy, President Bush and his emergency-response team congratulated each other for jobs well done and spoke of water, food and troops pouring into the ravaged city. Television pictures told a different story.

"What it reminded me of the other day is 'Baghdad Bob' saying there are no Americans at the airport," said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant in Washington. He was referring to Saddam Hussein's reality-challenged minister of information who denied the existence of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital.
...
"It's impossible to defend something like this happening in America," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.
...
In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the government quickly put private cargo and passenger planes into service.

It hasn't been widely discussed yet, but another disaster will strike the victims of Hurricane Katrina on October 17, 2005. And Bush can't say that he didn't anticipate it. He orchestrated it.

The president's beloved Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act goes into effect on that day.

Interesting that while the bill was passing though the House Judiciary Committee early this year, Democrats attempted to amend the bill to include measures to protect victims of natural disasters such as hurricanes.

The amendment to the bill, proposed by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) was voted down without debate. Along party lines.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in California comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

The real lesson of Katrina, though, is that the scenes we've been watching in New Orleans could be repeated in many other places in the decades ahead, if the worst-case scenarios generated by the global climate change models become realities.

It's easy, even for reasonable people, to disregard those scenarios. The worst case, after all, doesn't usually happen. But the flooding of New Orleans, like the destruction of Pompeii, is a graphic demonstration of the fact that sometimes the worst case (or something like it) does happen, especially if it is preceded by years of willful ignorance and blind self interest.

If the worst case for global climate change comes to pass, the environmental and economic losses will dwarf, many times over, the costs of Hurricane Katrina. They'll also reduce into insignificance the price tag on the Kyoto Treaty -- which itself may be too little, too late. If Shrub really thinks that doing something about climate change would "wreck the economy," he should spend some of his unused vacation time thinking about what just happened to New Orleans.

Andrew Sullivan: QUOTE OF THE DAY II: "'The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch.' (Laughter)." - president George W. Bush, today. Just think of that quote for a minute; and the laughter that followed. The poor and the black are dying, dead, drowned and desperate in New Orleans and elsewhere. But the president manages to talk about the future "fantastic" porch of a rich, powerful white man who only recently resigned his position because he regretted the failure of Strom Thurmond to hold back the tide of racial desegregation.

FEMA Dir. Mike Brown fired from prior job at Horse Assoc.

The big disconnect on New Orleans -- The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version"

The GOP agenda in action (a must see visual)

FEMA Director: We Did Not Know New Orleans Convention Center Was A Hurricane Shelter

"A Can't-Do Government" By PAUL KRUGMAN

Anderson Cooper speaks truth to power

Newsview: Politicians Failed Storm Victims

Mostly just links, because I'm too depressed and horrified to do anything more. Discourse.net

Bush's Role in the Drowning of New Orleans See also: Katrina Comes Home to Roost

'Times-Picayune' Blog/Forum Reveals True Horror of Disaster Today

9.3.2005 Jonathan Rauch "With It Takes a Family, Rick Santorum has served notice. The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left, but from the Right."

9.1.2005 "FEMA Directing Donations To Rev. Pat Robertson" See also: Pat Robertson Counts His Federal Blessings and this

While OBI trumpets its work at home and abroad through its Web site, other sources provide a more nuanced picture. In 1996, the Norfolk, Va.-based Virginia-Pilot newspaper reported that two pilots who were hired by the charity to fly humanitarian aid to Zaire in 1994 were used almost exclusively for Robertson's diamond mining operations

The Bush administration has been incrementally dismantling FEMA and legislating a general end to the central government's key role in disaster relief and remediation. What we see unfolding in Louisiana and Mississippi is not a break down of material supplies to help -- but rather of coordination.

What the federal government and large corporations tend to do well in this country is highly complex systems integration, organizing responses to demanding situations with myriad issues and players involved. However, we have gutted FEMA before there was another agency in place to take over its role -- and the Department of Homeland Security which Secretary Michael Chertoff is trying to rationalize and re-organize is not prepared for prime time.

These are real gaps in American security and well-being and after the many victims are seen to in these impacted states, the American public should be outraged and demand change.

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