katrina report -- leadership failure; white house response -- that's yesterday's news
A preview in the Washington Post today of the report on the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, to be released Wednesday. Looks like the report lays much of the blame on senior officials at the White House and Department of Homeland Security, including DHS Secretary Chertoff.
The report, titled "A Failure of Initiative," is apparently surprisingly critical, given that it was prepared by House Republicans. The report hammers DHS and the White House for failing to take the initiative to act quickly as the levee broke in New Orleans.
And the White House's initial response, from White House spokesman Trent Duffy? "The president is less interested in yesterday, and more interested with today and tomorrow so that we can be better prepared for next time."
Typical. For the de facto Bush Administration, there are usually two types of response to criticism. One is character assassination; see the treatment of Ambassador Joe Wilson as a prominent example of this method. But it's hard to assassinate the character of a hurricane, or of a House committee, so here they initially are resorting to another tried-and-true method: "let bygones be bygones."
Duffy's statement is of course absurd, since to be better prepared for today and tomorrow you NEED to closely examine the lessons of yesterday.
Three more years. Let's hope there are no more disasters for them to mismanage, and that their head-in-the-sand attitude to climate change doesn't mean we lose one last chance to mitigate that potentially-greatest-of-all calamities.
The report, titled "A Failure of Initiative," is apparently surprisingly critical, given that it was prepared by House Republicans. The report hammers DHS and the White House for failing to take the initiative to act quickly as the levee broke in New Orleans.
And the White House's initial response, from White House spokesman Trent Duffy? "The president is less interested in yesterday, and more interested with today and tomorrow so that we can be better prepared for next time."
Typical. For the de facto Bush Administration, there are usually two types of response to criticism. One is character assassination; see the treatment of Ambassador Joe Wilson as a prominent example of this method. But it's hard to assassinate the character of a hurricane, or of a House committee, so here they initially are resorting to another tried-and-true method: "let bygones be bygones."
Duffy's statement is of course absurd, since to be better prepared for today and tomorrow you NEED to closely examine the lessons of yesterday.
Three more years. Let's hope there are no more disasters for them to mismanage, and that their head-in-the-sand attitude to climate change doesn't mean we lose one last chance to mitigate that potentially-greatest-of-all calamities.
posted by Don Q Blogger at 3:05 PM
2 Comments:
They ALWAYS do this shit.
Put off addressing it for a couple days, then you can say the reporter is living in the past. (Ask David Gregory).
I don't know what anyone should expect it isn't like they're putting much up for continuation to build the Gulf Coast back up.
Fuckers.
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