An Absence of Leadership

Well, Brownie's testimony (along with other Homeland Security officials) is over... Here's the gist of it: Brown places blame on White House/Homeland Security. They, in turn, blame Brown. The real answer is, of course, that everyone screwed up. When their country needed them the most, our leaders were all was asleep at the wheel.

This graphic that was on Huffington Post says it all about their leadership-


The AP has details on the testimony-

Former federal disaster chief Michael Brown testified Friday he notified top White House and Homeland Security officials on the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore that "we were realizing our worst nightmare" and New Orleans was seriously flooding...

If you didn't read it yet, today's NY Times provides the essential timeline of the failures:
White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm

ThinkProgress has an even more detailed timeline- here.

I believe in the real world they call this 'criminal negligence'.

Here is an odd statement made by Brown-

Brown suggested the administration's fixation with fighting terrorism may have been to blame, in part, for the slow government response...

...Had there been a report that "a terrorist had blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that," Brown added

This is a very odd and stupid distinction to make. Why does it matter what caused the levee to break? All that matters is that the city of New Orleans was flooding... and experiencing far more widespread damage than has been caused in terrorist attacks. As Atrios notes, "Dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack is pretty much exactly like dealing with a major national disaster. It's the precisely the same thing from that perspective. For what possible reason would one cause of death and chaos invite a greater emergency response than another?"... Is that the cost of the administration's obession with terrorism? That the citizens of this country become an afterthought?

I watched some of the hearings this afternoon. The part I saw was two Homeland Security officials being questioned and responding to the new information Brown revealed. One of the officials blew off the emails Brown sent out about the flooding, saying they were "in the middle of the night" and no one could have seen. The Senator corrected him, noting the first email was at around 9:30pm and asked incrediously if, during such an emergency, everyone really shut off their computers and went home to sleep. The DHS official sheepishly admitted that, no, they did not. So they were aware. Brown, by the way, also states he personally informed White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card of the situation. Finally, as the Senator told the DHS official, the "we didn't know" defense was complete bullshit because all they had to do was turn on CNN and see that the city was being flooded.

Now, while I am glad to see Brown coming clean and finally revealing this info, I am hoping that everyone resists the urge to let him off the hook. Mr. Heck-Of-A-Job himself has plenty of blood on his hands. While FEMA's man in New Orleans, Marty Bahamonde, was frantically begging FEMA to get down there and help... he was blown off and told to leave Mr. Brown alone while he ate his dinner. Bahamonde was livid at this reaction to his pleas, noting that the people in the Superdome were eating MREs and shitting on the floor. And let us also not forget the emails that revealed Brown's "let them eat cake" attitude toward the destruction in New Orleans.

There was also Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice shoe shopping in NYC and laughing it up at Broadway shows.

And what about the President's role in all of this?

ReddHedd at Firedoglake has some great coverage and thoughts on the Katrina hearings. She asks, in response to the revelations that the White House was told on August 29 of the flooding (earlier than they previously claimed to have been informed), "Is that why the President stayed on vacation, until forced to return to the WH by public disgust and outcry? Why he told Dianne Sawyer that no one could have anticipated the levee breach? Why the President said the next morning after Katrina that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet?". She earlier noted that the only two possibilities are that: "[E]ither no one told the President what was going on in New Orleans -- or he knew and just went about his business without caring one bit about the disaster that had befallen New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf region."

Neither possibility is without precedent. If Bush knew and went about his business (fiddling while Rome burned), it is just like September 11 when the President went into his classroom photo-op after being informed of the first tower being hit. And then when told of the second tower being hit, he stayed in the classroom until his handlers finally escorted him out. If he was genuinely unaware (which is equally horrid), the precedent is last May's plane scare in Washington DC. That incident involved a plane flying erratically over the area (later found out to be an error); an attack was feared. The White House, Capitol Building, and other important buildings were evacuated.... But the President wasn't even informed until it was all over- He was riding his bike nearby. As I noted on my old blog, "In a moment of crisis, it was decided that, in the grand scheme of things, the President was unimportant."

This is a President who cut a vacation short for Terri Schiavo, but wouldn't do the same for New Orleans.

It should be noted again that, four years after 9/11, there was no excuse not to have a plan to respond to this kind of scenario. Especially since preparation scenarios for levee failures were discussed. And especially since their own website stated that "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility [for] providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort"... If this had been a terrorist attack (biological, nuclear, or just destructive in general), we'd all be screwed. And yet no repercussions for the President whose entire reelection pitch was "I can protect you".

An American city was nearly destroyed on their watch... why is this being treated like just another political story?

[PS- Congress swore Mr. Brown in... what an odd concept.]