Pushing Back

Karl Rove has started pushing back after a pretty bad PR week. The story he's pushing right now is that Kathleen Blanco was late in declaring a state of emergency. WAPO and Newsweek bit and printed it. (WAPO has printed a retraction.) This is obviously false. Blanco sent a request for aid to Bush on August 28th. She ordered the State of Emergency on the 26th. Even if she didn't send it, the blame lays solely on the Bush Administration, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security.

You are probably going to be hearing a lot in the weeks to come about the DHS's National Response Plan. Pages 43-44 of this plan deals with Proactive Federal Response to Catastrophic Events. From the Department of Homeland Securities plan:

Notification and full coordination with States will occur,
but the coordination process must not delay or impede
the rapid deployment and use of critical resources.
States are urged to notify and coordinate with local
governments regarding a proactive Federal response.

In other words, fuck the paperwork, get off you asses and get something done.

In this situation, the exact opposite happened. The only federal officials there were FEMA officials whose main job seemed to have been turning private relief organizations relief efforts away. I read about a team of firemen from Houston trained in hurricane recovery with boats sitting in a parking lot for five days before they said fuck it and went home. FEMA refused to let them into New Orleans due to security concerns. When they asked if could go to other areas of Louisiana where security was better, FEMA's answer was simply no.

The administration can push back all they want, the blame is theirs. The president thought it more important to play golf, eat cake and go to a fucking hillbilly jamboree.

National Response Plan found via Larry Johnson