It's amazing how in our country we throw the book at individuals who respond to the situations created by the utter ineptitude of our government, while those who helped create those situations get consulting contracts.

Georgia10 points us to Peter King's columnn in Sports Illustrated:

Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. ...

What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere.

I mentioned my outrage to the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Thursday. He shook his head and said, "Tell me about it.'' Disgust dripped from his voice.

What are we doing in this country?

"It's been eight months since Katrina,'' said Jack Bowers, my New Jersey friend and Habitat for Humanity guide through the Lower Ninth Ward, as he took us through deserted streets where nothing, absolutely nothing, was being done about the wasteland that this place is.

"Eight months!" he said. "And look at it. When people talk to me about New Orleans, they say, 'Well, things are getting back to normal down there, aren't they?' I tell them things are a long, long way from normal, and it's going to be a long time before it's ever normal. And I tell them they've never seen anything like this.''

Our Mississippi guide, Josh Norman of the Biloxi Sun-Herald, put it this way: "People outside of here are tired of hearing about it. They've moved on to the next news cycle.''

How can we let an area like the Lower Ninth Ward sit there, on the eve of another hurricane season, with nothing being done to either bulldoze the place and start over, or rebuild? How can Congress sit on billions of looming aid and not release it for this area?

I can't help but think that if this were Los Angeles or New York, that 500 percent more money -- and concern -- would have flooded into this place. And I can't help but think that if the idiots who let the levees down here go to seed had simply been doing their jobs, we'd never have been in this mess in the first place -- in New Orleans, at least. Other than former FEMA director Michael Brown, are you telling me that no others are paying for this with their jobs? Whatever happened to responsibility?

Am I ticked off? Damn right I'm ticked off. If you're breathing, you should be morally outraged. Katrina fatigue? Hah! More Katrina news! Give me more! Give it to me every day on the front page! Every day until Washington realizes there's a disaster here every bit as urgent as anything happening in this world today -- fighting terrorism, combating the nuclear threat in Iran. I'm not in any way a political animal, but all you have to be is an occasionally thinking American to be sickened by the conditions I saw.

The Lower Ninth Ward is a 1.5-by-2-mile area a couple of miles from the center of New Orleans. It is a poor area. I should say it was a poor area. Before the storm, 20,000 people lived there. Fats Domino lived there. So, formerly, did Marshall Faulk. And now you drive through it and see nothing being done to fix it or tear it down, or to do anything.

In Mississippi, we drove through one formerly thriving beach town that has two structures left. We drove past concrete pads with litter and shards of wood around them. Former houses. The houses, quite literally, have been eviscerated. Hundreds of them. This is what nuclear winter must look like, I thought.

I'm a sportswriter. It's not my job to figure how to fix what ails the Gulf Coast. But the leaders of this society are responsible. And they're not doing their jobs. I could ignore everything I saw and go back to my nice New Jersey cocoon, forgetting I saw it. And I know you don't read me to hear my worldviews. But I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't say something.

On Saturday, at the Saints' headquarters for the draft, I watched the day unfold with a friend of the team, New Orleans businessman and president Michael Whelan. I told him what I'd seen, and asked him what he thought.

"We spend all this money on the war in Iraq and we can't take care of our own cities?" he said. "You get out of downtown, and it's like a war zone in a lot of neighborhoods still. The government has been a huge letdown. I've heard billions of dollars are going to be sent here. Where are they? Nothing is taking place. I certainly think that now it's back-page news; the government is sweeping it under the rug."

Sports Illustrated. I can't help but think that this, more than any number, bodes ill for the President and the Republican Party in 2006.

They've proven they aren't serious about governing. Perhaps the American people, however, are serious about having a government that works.

Or, another reason Republicans are going to suffer at the polls in 2006:

The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding New Orleans's levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10 billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region.

Monthly cost of the Iraq war to U.S. taxpayers: $5.8 billion.

If we weren't in Iraq, the savings could pay for the levee rebuilding in seven weeks.

NYT:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 — House Republicans plan to issue a blistering report on Wednesday that says the Bush administration delayed the evacuation of thousands of New Orleans residents by failing to act quickly on early reports that the levees had broken during Hurricane Katrina.

A draft of the report, to be issued by an 11-member, all-Republican committee, says the Bush administration was informed on the day Hurricane Katrina hit that the levees had been breached, even though the president and other top administration officials earlier said that they had learned of the breach the next day.

That delay was significant, the report says, rejecting the defense given by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security that the time it took to recognize the breach did not significantly affect the response.

"If the levees breached and flooded a large portion of the city, then the flooded city would have to be completely evacuated," the draft report says. "Any delay in confirming the breaches would result in a delay in the post-landfall evacuation of the city." It adds that the White House itself discounted damage reports that later proved true....

"Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare," the draft says. "At every level — individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental — we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw."

A White House spokesman said that President Bush was now focused on the future, not the past.

Republicans, too, are focused on the future and not the past-- which is why the fabled Bush fealty is breaking down with rapid speed. As 2006 and 2008 approach, the Bush family will learn a lesson they never learned before: political loyalty only exists as long as there is an election ahead of you. As W. heads out to pasture, so too will the willingness of Republicans to defend him at any cost.

Unbelievable:

You know, it's hard to imagine anything worse than coming back to your home in New Orleans and finding it completely destroyed. But, tonight, as you're about to hear, there is something worse, much worse. Dozens of families have returned to what is left of their homes and found, lying amidst the mold and the wreckage, a body, forgotten, abandoned. Maybe it's their mother or their grandmother, sometimes even their missing child.

The state called off searching house to house in New Orleans well over a month ago. They said they completed the job.
SNIP
There was no joy for Paul Murphy (ph) in this homecoming. When he walked into his house in New Orleans' Ninth Ward last month for the first time since Katrina, it was shock and anger.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, I'm thinking that, OK, I was going to come and salvage a few pictures or something. And I walk in here. I found my grandma on the floor dead....

COOPER: You warned us October 3. When the state stopped house- to-house searching for -- for -- for the deceased, you said, it was a bad idea, that there were more people out there. Now the death toll, it turns out, has jumped by 104. And -- and families are returning to find the bodies of their loved ones still in their homes.

Via Scout Prime, via Americablog.

Heckuva shirt, Brownie:

Even as subordinates warned him that the flooding of New Orleans was a matter of life or death, Michael Brown, the now-dismissed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, remained strangely detached from the crisis, e-mails made public Wednesday show.

He mused about his future, joked about a new shirt and wondered how he looked on TV.

On Aug. 31, two days after the storm flooded the city, a FEMA regional director sent Brown an urgent e-mail about patients dying "within hours," a lack of food and water, hundreds of rescues and a situation "past critical."

Brown's response? "Thanks for update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?" ...

On the morning that the storm hit, Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, told Brown he looked "fabulous" during a TV appearance and complimented him on his shirt.

Brown joked that he was a "fashion god" and responded: "I got it at Nordstrom's. ... Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I come home now?"

Yes. Please.

City of my joy, city of my dreams
Under water and forgotten
Corpses floating by
Babies dying
Young and old blacks, old whites

That could be my grandmother
Dead in her wheelchair
Or my brother's corpse
Floating in the water

My President is bragging about his war
Surrounded by white-clad sailors
Spending the night in the white Hotel del Coronado
While blacks, mostly blacks
Suffer and die

The aid trickles in
More die by the hour
Donate to the Red Cross
I do so but feel worthless nonetheless

It is not what I can or cannot do
Do or do not do
That would save those people

It is what my society
My government
My leaders
Are able to do

They disappoint me
And I am ashamed
Of the government
Of the society
I call my own
And am part of
And am at least in part responsible for

I'll become better than that
And settle for nothing less
From those who lead me

Goodbye New Orleans
I'll see you again on the other side of this nightmare

The Independent has obtained a damning independent report commissioned by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (ie, Rummy):

In a hard-hitting analysis, it says: "The US military has long planned for war on two fronts. This is as close as we have come to [that] reality since the Second World War; the results have been disastrous."

The document was compiled by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor of the US Army's War College and an adviser to the Pentagon who was a deputy-director in the Louisiana relief efforts....

The report states that Brigadier General Michael D Barbero, commander of the Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk, Louisiana, refused permission for special forces units who volunteered to join relief efforts, to do so. General Barbero also refused to release other troops.

"The same general did take in some families from Hurricane Katrina, but only military families living off the base," the report says. "He has done a similar thing for military families displaced by Hurricane Rita. However, he declined to share water with the citizens of Leesville, who are out of water, and his civil affairs staff have to sneak off post in civilian clothes to help coordinate relief efforts." The report says deployment in the Iraq war led to serious problems. "Another major factor in the delayed response to the hurricane aftermath was that the bulk of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was deployed in Iraq.

"Even though all the states have 'compacts' with each other, pledging to come to the aid of other states, it takes time, money and effort to activate and deploy National Guard troops from other states to fill in..."

The report concludes: "The one thing this disaster has demonstrated [is] the lack of coordinated, in-depth planning and training on all levels of Government, for any/all types of emergency contingencies. 9/11 was an exception because the geographical area was small and contained, but these two hurricanes have clearly demonstrated a national response weakness ... Failure to plan, and train properly has plagued US efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now that failure has come home to roost in the United States."

Indeed it has.

Admittedly, Rita was a far less powerful storm than Katrina. Yet this Knight-Ridder article raises some interesting points:

The Bush administration says it's researching whether the federal government needs to have greater authority to respond to disasters - and whether the military should be in charge.

The response to Rita, however, suggests that the government had plenty of authority to respond to Katrina and that what was lacking during Katrina was an understanding of when to use that authority.

Yeah, but let's make the powergrab anyway....

Donna Brazille just doesn’t get it. Apparently, Karl Rove doesn’t either. But the rest of us sure do. Bush’s polls fell after his prime time speech last week for good reason. A whole lot of Southerners tuned in to hear what he had to say. And a whole lot of us couldn’t believe our ears. First off, the word “reconstruction” doesn’t set too well with folks in this part of the country. Bush threw it around like a kid with a hand grenade, demonstrating how out of touch he and his administration are with the people they supposedly serve. Down here, reconstruction stirs up unpleasant memories of a raped and pillaged and burned South, descended upon by carpet bagging masses like vultures. It means Yankees making big money off of a land laid waste and a people without hope, not unlike Halliburton today. It means a lot of focus on property and greed and profit over attendance to the needs of people. And that’s exactly what we would have liked to hear in his speech: less talk about the economics of recovery and more about what to do for a million folks who have been unleashed in this country with nothing at all left.

Maybe we’re lucky he didn’t talk about how to help the folks any more than he did. Because when he did unveil his plan, we could see how misguided he really is. He promised an “urban homesteading act”, where folks made homeless by this event in New Orleans could lay claim to federal land parcels and rebuild. Black folks have heard this talk before in this country and are still waiting for reparations now. 40 Acres and a mule is not going to get them out of this mess. Maybe that’s why only 43% of those polled said they would come back to New Orleans.

Whether they decide to go “home” or not, Bush assured us that they would all be out of shelters by mid October and made good on his promise: within hours, the Houston Astrodome had been all but emptied-- leaving many to wonder, where did all those people go?

But why worry our pretty little heads about housing? All those folks will be eligible for $5,000 to get training and education for a “good job”, promised Bush. He made similar promises during his last campaign circuit, and as usual, I am reminded of the thousands of folks out of work in this part of the country, not simply due to lack of education, but because of down-sizing and out-sourcing. In this country, education no longer means you get to work.

Across the country eyebrows raised at the price tags GWB slapped on this disaster, like the one above. And Southern Democrats and Republicans alike share one value for certain: fiscal conservatism. Where exactly does he think the billions of dollars needed to deal with the damage will come from, especially since we are in a costly war abroad? We’re already bleeding our budget dry overseas for Mideast democracy and freedom. How are we supposed to rebuild an area the size of Great Britain? Mr. President, this ain’t a handful of buildings in New York City and we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t recycle your speeches and high-flown rhetoric.

Speaking of New York and 911, which this administration loves to do, the first we southerners have heard about a number to call to locate lost relatives in this mess was during Bush’s speech last Thursday, three weeks after the actual disaster. The contrast to 911 is remarkable, when, within hours a similar number flashed along the bottom of the television screen on any station one cared to watch. His recitation of the toll free number last Thursday was so bizarre and surreal as to be almost laughable, if the circumstances weren’t so tragic, reminiscent of infomercials and Saturday Night Live skits.

Maybe even stranger was his promise that in the future, we’ll just let the armed forces handle disaster. Terrific. Since our president doesn’t read the newspaper or watch television, he probably isn’t aware that 300 members of the National Guard were present in the convention center, where the worst of the New Orleans debacle took place. Those folks are actually trained in disaster response and they barricaded themselves away from the crowd and hid. I can’t imagine that a national military, with no training in disaster relief could have handled the job better. Let them eat guns, says our fearless leader. We’ve got news for you, George: munitions are not the answer to starving masses; food and water is all that is required.

If only this had been a normal hurricane, than normal disaster relief would have worked, Bush reminded us in his speech. Ah, but that is precisely the point. Disasters are by nature abnormal. Yet on this president’s watch they have become almost expected.