The Buck Stops With Bush

A White House report released this week ladled blame on former FEMA head Michael Brown for the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina - though not his boss, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, or anyone in the White House.

Brown has fired back charging:

"We ought to get mad at the President. We ought to get mad at Secretary Chertoff," Brown said in an interview with NBC News.

Brown said Bush should have known by Sunday, Aug. 28, the day before landfall, that the storm would be a cataclysm. "The alarm bells were being sounded on Sunday," he said. "Because not only was I having conferences with the President on the telephone, but he was also on the video conference with all of the state emergency managers."

The White House had no immediate reaction to Brown's latest comments. A spokesman referred reporters to White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend's previous comment that Brown had broken the chain of command, attempting to deal directly with the White House instead of reporting to Chertoff, leading to a communication and coordination breakdown.

So let's get this straight, the White House says the reason Katrina became a disaster was because Brown didn't follow the chain of command and there was a communication breakdown. Brown was talking to the President, the Big Cheese, the Head Honcho, the one guy who could order mobilization of all emergency resources – right away, and there was a communication breakdown??

Bush and his drones = incompetence.
Posted on The Human Stain