Katrina-Bush and the political questions begin

The Guardian reported today, that help is coming in from all quarters-

Including Cuba, Afghanistan, and the United Nations!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562886,00.html

That made me smile, in the light of some posts on these pages in the last two years, from right-wing blowhards.

May this be a new start in an era of international co-operation, mutual understanding, peace and love....but I'm not holding my breath.

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sozobe wrote:

Thanks for that one, blatham. This was particularly striking, from David Brooks:

Quote:
DAVID BROOKS: 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.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.

Today, from Krugman (it will be interesting to hear Thomas' considerations on this argument)...

Quote:

But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

And, a likely to be significant event re the /poverty race component to this story, from Chicago Tribune...

Quote:

Kanye West's impromptu attack on President Bush during a live telecast Friday prompted NBC to delete his remark in its West Coast broadcast of the benefit for hurricane victims.
"George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said.

This story, as a quick check with google news will show, is being picked up broadly across black and music media operations - in other words, by media which youth and black youth particularly seem likely to be engaged and conversant. But it's also in the big media (Trib, LA times, etc).

This natural disaster, along with associated political issues, presents a deep and serious threat - possibly terminal - to the modern Conservative Movement in America. The contract between citizens and government which developed in the New Deal period has been greatly eviscerated over the last 30 years and the consequences of that ideological shift are now evident with a clarity which will be very difficult, if not impossible, to cover up or spin.

Points of ideology which seem to have turned a sharp corner:

Government is bad - The anti-tax, get government so small you can drown it in a bathtub extremism of the Norquist contingent will no longer be sustainable. Further tax cuts, including the estate tax proposals, will now face passionate and broad opposition.

Market forces lift all boats - The faith that dispassionate market forces will produce a political regimen favorable for all citizens is simply not compatible with what we have all seen in New Orleans.

Racism is extinct - The passionate anger which has arisen from this peek into the marginalization of blacks in the South seems likely to foster a political activism amongst the black community particularly, but also within the broader community, which has the potential to re-ignite alliances and re-evaluations of the sort we saw during the civil rights era.

Empathy for the poor and under-priviledged - How is it that our institutions and our political representatives and we ourselves came to believe that the proper set of citizen values are those held by Dicken's Scrooge BEFORE the visitation by ghosts, rather than the values he came to hold AFTER?

Rich elites give a ****, and we can count on them to do well by us - George Bush joked about getting too drunk in New Orleans. Yuk yuk. How could someone be so tone-deaf to suffering, to class distinction, and to the responsibilities of the Presidency in a democracy which holds equality and justice and mutual endeavor as keystones to the political contract? How could the head of FEMA be in his post without any relevant history of experience or even of administrative competence, but with merely social connections to Bush? Enron, Halliburton, Wall Street corruption, huge riches to some and squallor to many many more. Trent Lott will rebuild his mansion even fancier than before and Bush will sit on the porch with him and these incredible asses thought this picture was an upper for those who'd lost everything or witnessed others lose everything?!

And there's much more, but I don't have time to write it out right now.

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That was my first thought, McTag. Then I remembered the aid to Iran in '03 after the quake, and had the same second thought.

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Blatham
Blatham, I'm venting instead of knocking my head against the wall.

A neighborhood (retired white woman who keepss trying to recruit me to her church) just stopped by my house to chat. I told her how angry I was about the hurricane evacuation disaster. My neighbor is a member of Pat Robertson's 700 club and very religious. She insisted that the way to help the people was to pray and that something good would come out of all of this. She said local churches in Albuquerque were taking in people from the area. She said if I really wanted to know what was happening, I should get the news from Pat Robertson and the 700 club.

I was trying to hide my anger because she is a nice person and doesn't have a clue about what is really needed.

Then she asked if New Orleans should be rebuilt? I couldn't stand it any longer and told her not as it currently exists. I told her that the Mississippi must be allowed to return to its normal path. This would eliminate the need for Lake Pontchartrain and the vast water containment systems. The wetlands could be restored and the wildlife could thrive.

She looked astonished at my opinion because she said Pat Robertson had not mentioned any of these ideas.

I told her temporary housing for evacuees were only a short term solution. I told her about my idea to activate closed military bases in nearby areas to house the evacuees and provide restoration work for people under construction expert instruction.

She was amazed because Pat Robertson had not mentioned this idea either.

About to explode, I asked her what had Pat Robertson said? She said he asked for donations to the 700 club because it's people had been in the disaster area from the beginning, helping the people---and to pray.

With that, and not wanting knock her stupid head off, I said, sorry, got to get back to my computer and bye bye. She waved back as she left. Instead of banging my head against the wall I decided to tell you about the event.

BBB

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blatham wrote:

Today, from Krugman (it will be interesting to hear Thomas' considerations on this argument)...

Quote:
But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

My considerations on this issue are rather boring, and basically a variation on an earlier point I made to Tico. I find nothing inconsistent in saying that a) big government has no business doing most of what it does, and b) big government fails at performing those functions that it does have a business doing. Whenever you start reading some libertarian literature, you will find that the authors quite frequently predict exactly that: The more government does, the less it does well.

But Krugman does have a point, and I think I made that one in a totally unrelated thread, in the context of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In a democracy, people cannot get to be rulers unless they want to rule you. Therefore, when people campaign for government positions on an anti-government agenda, they are likely to be fakes. Conversely,when people are honest, competent, and believe in small government, they have neither incentives nor a chance to run anything worth running in government. Consequently, you end up with catastrophies handled like the Bush administration handled 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina.

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Center Dir. briefed Brown & Chertoff before hurricane
Hurricane Center Director Tells Paper He Briefed Brown and Chertoff on Danger of Severe Flooding
By Editors & Publishers Staff
Published: September 04, 2005

NEW YORK: Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune Sunday afternoon that officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA Director Mike Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Hurricane Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi--and were advised of the storm's potential deadly effects.

"Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings," the paper reported. "He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornados to accompany the storm as it came ashore.

"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It's not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped."

Chertoff told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.

Brown, Mayfield said, is a dedicated public servant. "The question is why he couldn't shake loose the resources that were needed,'&#x2019 he said.

Brown and Chertoff could not be reached for comment on Sunday afternoon.

In the days before Katrina hit, Mayfield said, his staff also briefed FEMA, which under the Department of Homeland Security, at FEMA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., its Region 6 office in Dallas and the Region 4 office in Atlanta about the potential effects of the storm. He said all of those briefings were logged in the hurricane center's records.

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I've just sat through a harangue in which a group of people ranted about how the locals were totally at fault for everything and then talking about the people camped in places like the Astrodome as chiselers, drunks, etc., as if every single one of them could be described with the term "low life." They were careful not to use the "n" word, so that nobody could bring it up later on, but racism is evident in every word they said. As of now, I am finished discussing it with anybody. But, I will let my government know what I think about the way things have gone.

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An open letter to the President from Times-Picayune
Orleans Breaking News
Sunday, September 04, 2005
The Times-Picayune
OUR OPINIONS: An open letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

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Feds So Far Have 'Bungled' Help After Hurricane
Knight Ridder: Feds So Far Have 'Bungled' Help After Hurricane
By E&P Staff
Published: September 01, 2005 11:16 AM ET

NEW YORK: "The federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday," an article by Knight Ridder's Seth Borenstein declared today.

Knight Ridder's newspaper in Biloxi, Miss., the Sun Herald, published an editorial on Wednesday blasting relief efforts in that area and lack of National Guard help.

Today's KR report continues:

"The experts, including a former Bush administration disaster response manager, told Knight Ridder that the government wasn't prepared, scrimped on storm spending and shifted its attention from dealing with natural disasters to fighting the global war on terrorism.

"The disaster preparedness agency at the center of the relief effort is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was enveloped by the new Department of Homeland Security with a new mission aimed at responding to the attacks of al-Qaida.

"'What you're seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels,' said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA's disaster response chief. 'All three levels have been weakened. They've been weakened by diversion into terrorism.'

"In interviews on Wednesday, several men and women who've led relief efforts for dozens of killer hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes over the years chastised current disaster leaders for forgetting the simple Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.

"Bush administration officials said they're proud of their efforts. Their first efforts emphasized rooftop rescues over providing food and water for already safe victims.

"'We are extremely pleased with the response of every element of the federal government (and) all of our federal partners have made to this terrible tragedy,' Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said during a news conference Wednesday in Washington.

"The agency has more than 1,700 truckloads of water, meals, tents, generators and other supplies ready to go in, Chertoff said. Federal health officials have started setting up at least 40 medical shelters. The Coast Guard reports rescuing more than 1,200 people.

"But residents, especially in Biloxi, Miss., said they aren't seeing the promised help, and Knight Ridder reporters along the Gulf Coast said they saw little visible federal relief efforts, other than search-and-rescue teams. Some help started arriving Wednesday by the truckloads, but not everywhere.

"'We're not getting any help yet,' said Biloxi Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Boney. 'We need water. We need ice. I've been told it's coming, but we've got people in shelters who haven't had a drink since the storm.'"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001053119

E&P Staff ([email protected])
Links referenced within this article

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

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Wonderful post, blatham. Many thanks.

This certainly is a rude reminder of the consequences of removing government spending from anything other than military-related projects. This, of course, has been a key aim of the neo-con movement.

But will people listen, even when the connection is made for them? When people connect the dots and draw diagrams? Will they get it?

Will someone be able to make the case that this is precisely the GOAL OF THE REPUBLICAN PHILOSOPHY?

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Yes Bernie- may I call you that? It was a wonderful post.

Thank you.

McT

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Yes Bernie, your post was clear and inspiring..........so much better than my tongue tied condition. I'm so mad I can't speak or reason about it. Keep up the good work, you bullheaded man you.

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Blame game from today's NYT

"...But furious state and local officials insisted that the real problem was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Chertoff's department oversees, failed to deliver urgently needed help and, through incomprehensible red tape, even thwarted others' efforts to help.

"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."

Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans expressed similar frustrations. "We're still fighting over authority," he told reporters on Saturday. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance." ..."

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Many Still Refuse to Leave New Orleans

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Oh brother, here we go with the Nanny government! I thought the whole point of the new republican ideology was to do away with Nannyism.

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Quote:

SNAPSHOT - Hurricane Katrina 1900 GMT

NEWS

* New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin tells NBC's Today Show that a death toll of 10,000 "wouldn't be unreasonable."

* Rescuers in boats, helicopters and military vehicles continue their house-to-house search for people still stranded in the city a week after the storm.

* Thousands of New Orleans area residents who fled Hurricane Katrina return for the first time to see what is left of their homes.

* President George W. Bush, under fierce criticism for his government's slow response to the hurricane, tours the affected region for the second time in a week and promises the U.S. will "do what it takes" to help victims of the devastating storm get back on their feet.

* Katrina response prompts questions of race in U.S.

* The U.S. Army says it had closed one major gap in the levees breached by Hurricane Katrina and was close to repairing a second.

* Former U.S. presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton establish a new fund to assist the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the hurricane.

* Katrina to hurt 2005 US growth, boost 2006, analysts say.

* Local officials believe thousands remain in the once-vibrant city despite mass evacuations before and after Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast last Monday, hammering an area the size of Britain in one of the biggest natural disasters in American history.

* State authorities say Louisiana's official death toll of 59 could rise into the thousands. Well over 100 deaths have been confirmed in Mississippi, with many people unaccounted for.

* South Korea and Australia voice frustration that U.S. relief efforts have prevented them from rescuing their citizens.

* BP Plc says it has restarted oil production at some of its Gulf of Mexico facilities which had been shut due to hurricane.

* Oil dips to pre-Katrina $65 on inventory release.

QUOTES

"This is one of the disasters that will test our soul, and test our spirits," President Bush says.

"We advise people that this city has been destroyed, it has completely been destroyed," says New Orleans Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley.

"Recovery is going to take years. We need to help these Gulf Coast communities and, of course, the great city of New Orleans get back on their feet," former president George Bush tells a news conference. "The job is too big, too overwhelming for any one group."

"I try to be upbeat but it's devastating. I may lose my house because I may not be able to make my payments, and I don't know when I'm going to work again," says Mark Becker, who returned to see his devastated home.

"We're angry, Mr. President," the New Orleans Times-Picayune said in an open letter.

source: reuters

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Quote:

Chertoff clueless about hurricane

Homeland Security director says planners never saw disaster coming

Posted: September 5, 2005
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON - In a press conference sure to deepen problems for besieged Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, he defended the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and told reporters government planners never imagined the New Orleans disaster could have occurred.

This despite the fact that the New Orleans hurricane scenario was the Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 1 disaster planning scenario for several years.

In fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of precisely this scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail.

Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it struck the Gulf Coast Aug. 29.

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" Aug. 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it."

Brown suggested FEMA - part of the Department of Homeland Security - was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one.

Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."

He added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt."

But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.

"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city.

But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings.

"This is really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise," Chertoff said. "There has been, over the last few years, some specific planning for the possibility of a significant hurricane in New Orleans with a lot of rainfall, with water rising in the levees and water overflowing the levees," he told reporters.

That alone would be "a very catastrophic scenario," Chertoff said. "And although the planning was not complete, a lot of work had been done. But there were two problems here. First of all, it's as if someone took that plan and dropped an atomic bomb simply to make it more difficult. We didn't merely have the overflow, we actually had the break in the wall. And I will tell you that, really, that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight."

Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.

"It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before - a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall - that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area."

As far back as Friday, Aug. 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.

But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.

"I think we have discovered over the last few days that with all the tremendous effort using the existing resources and the traditional frameworks of the National Guard, the unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model - one for what you might call kind of an ultracatastrophe," Chertoff said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those wishing to contribute to hurricane relief efforts can donate to the Salvation Army online or by calling 1-800-725-2769. Red Cross donations can be made online or by calling 1-800-435-7669.

Source

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dyslexia wrote:

Oh brother, here we go with the Nanny government! I thought the whole point of the new republican ideology was to do away with Nannyism.

A friend from New Mexico told me they're almost at the point of telling you to drive on the right side of the road. Scary.

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Here comes soothing fbaezer...

Modern civil protection is all about prevention.
All actions after a natural or human made disaster are mere situational remedies.

Prevention can't be done exclusively by Nanny Government. It's a citizen duty.
But government at all levels is to encourage and help organize citizen's civil protection.
Government is to be in contact with the media to help people prevent the consequences of predicted disasters such as the one caused by hurricane Katrina.
And government is to understand which urban development conditions are dangerous to the colectivity, enforce rational urban development and prevent social infrastructural damage.

So what was done and not done to prevent a human disaster in New Orleans.
The best thing was to order evacuation of the city. The huge lines of cars leaving town were a signal that the mandatory call helped save hundreds of lives.
All the other measures -shelters, buses- were also good, but insufficient.
The lack of funds for keeping a safe antiflood infrastructure in N.O. and all messing around with the local environment played harshly against the population.

People refusing to leave their properties -on fear of theft- tell a lot about the lack of sufficient civil prevention culture, and also about the prevailing "each one for himself and God against everyone" mood that sweeps America. It is very sad.
Same thing to be said about looters shooting at helicopters, about the visible class distinction among those who suffered the most damage, the bureaucracy regarding inmediate help and several other details.

May I say that outside the US, at the same time there is a true feeling of sadness for the people in New Orleans, there is also a sense of surprise, from both the images and the Federal Government's reaction: "What? Is this the United States of America? It doesn't look like a first world country at all!"

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Quote:
Chertoff clueless about hurricane

Homeland Security director says planners never saw disaster coming

Posted: September 5, 2005
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON - In a press conference sure to deepen problems for besieged Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, he defended the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and told reporters government planners never imagined the New Orleans disaster could have occurred.

This despite the fact that the New Orleans hurricane scenario was the Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 1 disaster planning scenario for several years.

In fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of precisely this scenario for years.

I guess he forgot to watch PBS in 2002.

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Katrina-Bush and the political questions begin

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