The Katrina Blame Game

It is a measure of the divisiveness of this particular president, that the squabble over a less than impressive response to Katrina’s devastation has devolved into a blame game, even as relief efforts continue. An article points to White House damage control efforts.

“They can’t do that,” Jane Bullock, who had a 22-year career at FEMA, told the Los Angeles Times, referring to Bush administration attempts to shift responsibility to state and local officials. “The moment the president declared a federal disaster, it became a federal responsibility. … The federal government took ownership over the response.”

That the response to this disaster has been so poor causes some concern:

Newt Gingrich, may have summed it up best of all, in an interview with the Financial Times: “If we can’t respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the gulf for days, then why do we think we’re prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?”

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