WASHINGTON (CNN) — The embattled former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency portrayed himself during testimony Friday as a scapegoat who had fought for emergency aid to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Ah, yes, let the rehabilitation begin. Now it’s no longer, “Michael Brown, inept leader of a woefully inept and unprepared FEMA”. No, it’s “Michael Brown, brave defender of embattled New Orleans who was stifled at every step by the inept bureaucrats at Homeland Security.” Whatever….
Now that Brown has morphed into what most disgraced government department heads become when they’re deposed for mismanagement and political ineptitude- a consultant- it’s time to burnish the old image. At least that way, he’ll have an easier time attracting clients will to pay his asking price for whatever it is his particular area of expertise happens to be (Managing horse shows? Cronyism? Fashion advice? Finding 4-star restaurants in disaster zones?). Hey, a man’s gotta eat….
“I was as frustrated as everyone” at “the slowness of the response. I was screaming and cussing,” Michael Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is probing the government’s sluggish response to the disaster.
Before Katrina’s landfall, he said he had pushed the appropriate officials “to cut every piece of red tape … to do everything they humanly could to respond to this.”
Judging by the emails exchanged by his staff, Brown was more concerned with eating arrangements and his personal appearance than anything else in the aftermath of Katrina. Brown may well have run up against the intransigence of the DHS bureaucracy, but it’s not as if he went out of his way to exhaust every option for rescuing the people of New Orleans.
Brown said the government’s response would have been different if terrorism had been the cause of the levee failures in New Orleans.
“But because this was a natural disaster, that has become the stepchild within the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.
Homeland Security officials have told the committee they did not know the extent of the disaster until a day after Brown did. But the former FEMA director called those assertions “disingenuous” and “baloney.”
Brown said he views himself as a scapegoat “abandoned” by the Bush administration.
Well, of course, he does. He’s probably got himself convinced that he’s some sort of tragic hero, trying to do the right thing only to be thwarted at every turn by the King’s evil henchmen.
Who knows what the reality of Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath is? The hearing on Capitol Hill are unlikely to clarify anything else besides the laying of blame. Most of the testimony seems to be provided by bureaucrats and Bush cronys intent on protecting their own sizable asses from any recriminations. The real story of what happened, what should have happened, and who screwed the pooch will probably never fully be known. That’s too bad, because the real tragedy may be that this experience might not be able to be used as a learning experience if those involved are more concerned about self-preservation than the truth. Yes, truly those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
I wonder what will happen the next time- and there WILL be a next time- a storm of Katrina’s magnitude, or some other similar natural disaster lands on this country’s shores? It would be nice to think that FEMA might do better next time, but I’m not naive enough to have faith in any government led by George W. Bush. No, Michael Brown won’t be involved, but some other Bush crony who can’t clean the crap from a dog’s ass will be- and things will be just as screwed up, if not moreso.
The sad reality in this scenario is that FEMA, Michael Brown, and George W. Bush all failed the people of the Gulf Coast. From Beaumont to New Orleans to Biloxi to Bay St. Louis to Mobile, people are suffering even more because of the ineptitude and inefficiency of the federal government’s disaster response system. Your tax dollars at work? Not bloody likely….
