It's the System!

If ever there was a perfect example of why the perpetrator of a crime cannot realistically determine guilt, one needs only to look at the sham “investigation” of the government's pitiful Hurricane Katrina response that has just been released by the Bush White House.

The report's conclusion is one that any five year old would love - “It wasn't me, I didn't do it”.

The White House acknowledged Thursday that the response to Hurricane Katrina was botched because federal officials were confused, poorly prepared and communicated badly. But instead of an overhaul of the Homeland Security bureaucracy, officials proposed 125 smaller fixes.

The 11 most urgent recommendations, which the White House said are needed before the hurricane season starts this year, had been routine practices by the Federal Emergency Management Agency before it was folded into the Department of Homeland Security, two former FEMA directors said Thursday.

"We did all that stuff all the time," said James Lee Witt, who ran FEMA under President Clinton. "I don't understand what they're doing. It's weird. They need to put FEMA back as an agency as it used to be. ... They need to look at how it used to be done, because it did work extremely well."

Homeland security adviser Frances Townsend, the author of the 228-page "Lessons Learned" report, blamed former FEMA Director Michael Brown, but not his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, for the communication and leadership problems.

"The response to Hurricane Katrina revealed a lack of familiarity with incident management, the planning discipline, legal authorities and field-level crisis leadership," the report said.

Beverly Cigler, who co-chaired a study of Katrina response for a public administrators' association, disputed Townsend's assessment. The plan "was as clear as day," Cigler said. "The people didn't read the plan, didn't know the plan or didn't implement the plan," said Cigler, a Penn State University public administration professor. The problem wasn't the leadership on the ground.....- but in Washington, and the White House didn't want to look at that, Cigler added.....This report just kind of says, `It's the system.'"

So I guess everyone was totally unqualified for their job and they all are ducking individual responsibility – just like frat boy George does.
Posted on The Human Stain