White House Strongly Defends Katrina Role

[brooklynite]

Top White House and Homeland Security officials pushed back hard on Monday against criticism of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

"I reject outright the suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully involved," said White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he "unequivocally and strongly" rejected suggestions that his agency was preoccupied with terror threats, at the expense of preparing for natural disasters.

Both officials spoke at a conference of state emergency management directors.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/13/national/w131759S77.DTL
- - -
So, if these are the results we get when he's fully involved, I'm not sure that makes me feel better...

[applegrove]

1. Total information bull-shitness!

[otohara]

2. No Suprise Here

they will go to their graves before admiting they fucked up on anything. Unless of course Chertoff decides he wants the big bucks after he's out and writes a tell all book.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

3. Yeah....He Was Involved....

He was on vacation in Crawford, then he was partying with his good buddy McCain in Arizona, and finally....while he was working hard on Katrina, he was playing guitar in San Diego.

Sure, he was working on it.

[Edgewater_Joe]

4. And Cheney's Hunting Buddy Ran Into Those Pellets

Face first.

He did.

It's TRUE!!!

[Canuckistanian]

5. What role?

You have to have a role to be criticized for it.

[merwin]

10. my thoughts exactly

[49jim]

6. .....fully involved doing what

playing the guitar?
watching a CD of the event? Whew!

[MGKrebs]

7. They have screwed up everything they have touched.

The incompetence is astounding. Of course they deny it, because they don't know how to do any better.

[pinniped]

8. I didn't believe them at first, but since they STRONGLY defended....

their Katrina role as opposed to merely defending it regularly, that's what did it for me.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the facts clearly state the Brady Bunch was in control and failed miserably.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Funny, I reject President Bush 110%. However, I believe Chertoff

when he rejects suggestions that his agency was preoccupied with terror threats. I can't think of a thing that the DHS has done since its inception except spend tax payer money on themselves.

[EarlG]

11. "I reject outright

the suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully involved..."

See today's Top 10, number 2:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/06/232.html

[Beetwasher]

30. PICS OF BUSH'S INVOLVEMENT

'Nuff said.

[Catchawave]

12. Sorry Bushies....

Katrina blew an American city back to the stone age while Bush fiddled. Buck stops with Bush.

[magellan]

13. Only if by "fully involved" they mean "forced to take grudging notice"

1) Bush** stopped paying attention after Blanco refused to federalize the National Guard.

2) WH staff were so afraid of Dimson's reaction to being interrupted on his hobnobbing, cake-eating, guitar-strumming mission that they had to put together a DVD of Katrina news highlights to bring him up to speed on the disaster. They even drew straws to decide who'd be the unlucky one to approach His Growliness.

ALL are guilty of being more concerned with themselves than for the people who were dying on the Gulf Coast.

That's the Republican definition of "fully involved".

[gademocrat7]

14. Parts of our country are still ravaged by the effects of Katrina.

The only involvement shrub had were photo ops. Empty, meaningless propaganda.

[MasonJar]

15. I hate to rain on Chertoff's parade, but I personally heard the idiot

being interviewed live on NPR and he didn't even believe that people were at the Convention Center, dying in front of the cameras. He practically called the reporter on the scene live a liar. He made himself look like a total dimbo... obviously he is either a dimbo like his boss or totally evil also like his boss.

[hayu_lol]

16. FEMA is so 'on top of things'...

that there are some 10,700 brand new mobile homes sitting in mud at Hope, Arkansas right now...empty...while Katrina survivors are being evicted from the temporary shelter they were given.

Some half a billion worth of mobiles are, and have been, just sitting there falling apart...many double wides exposed to the elements.

There has been time enough to form mobile parks with paved streets and infrastructure to have been built and many of the survivors could have been housed. Instead, most of these mobiles will be sold as salvage eventually...for pennies on the dollar. What a waste.

[rodeodance]

22. dang--wiish i had heard that one. Chertoff is a bit ticked off. Too bad

[spanone]

17. Too fucking little, too fucking late.

[ninkasi]

18. Oh, please...

This is how engaged he was, according to this article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/s

<snip>Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.

<snip>The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

This is hardly the picture of a man "fully engaged". To me, it's a self-absorbed, out of touch man who didn't want to cut his precious vacation short. His aides had to prepare a DVD of newscasts, because Bush had not bothered to keep himself informed about the worst natural disaster to hit our country. And this guy is supposed to keep us safe????

[JeffR]

19. Let it ride!

The response to Katrina was a fuck-up of colossal proportions. If the little shit was "fully involved", what does that say about his competence?

[rodeodance]

20. nominated

[rodeodance]

21. gee, Townsend makes a declarative statement so all is well!!

"I reject outright the suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully involved," said White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend.

[rodeodance]

23. "Both Townsend and Chertoff took swipes at Brown,"

...Both Townsend and Chertoff took swipes at Brown, who resigned under pressure in September as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"There is no place for a lone ranger in emergency management," said Chertoff, whose Department of Homeland Security is FEMA's parent agency.

Brown testified before a Senate committee last week that he issued repeated warnings to the White House and DHS the day the hurricane struck, Aug. 29, that levees had failed and New Orleans was seriously flooding.

He suggested that the White House and DHS had dragged their feet. Bush and other federal officials have said they did not know until the next day, Aug. 30, that levees had been breached.

[rodeodance]

24. Townsend, at Bush's request is conducting her own "lessons learned"

...Townsend, who at Bush's request is conducting her own "lessons learned" inquiry, said her report would be released later this month.

A Senate panel is conducting a separate review due in March.

While both Chertoff and Townsend acknowledged that the federal response left much to be desired, both suggested federal officials up to Bush had been unfairly criticized.

Bush, who was traveling in Arizona and California the day the storm roared ashore, was "highly engaged" in monitoring its advance, Townsend said.

[cyberpj]

25. Why isn't the press calling them on all this 'I REJECT' crap. Snotty, the

Chimp, this "official" -- will someone please notice how they've all adopted that phrase lately.

so what?

we reject your rejection!

[rodeodance]

27. Chertoff hates the press as much as Cheney does.

[rodeodance]

26. "Michael Chertoff "unequivocally and strongly" rejected,,,"

....Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff "unequivocally and strongly" rejected suggestions that his agency was preoccupied with terror threats at the expense of preparing for natural disasters.

Both spoke at a conference of state emergency management directors in suburban Alexandria, Va.

Their rebuttal came as a Republican-written House report blamed government-wide ineptitude for mishandling Hurricane Katrina relief. A report by Congress' investigative arm, the
Government Accountability Office, reached similar conclusions and singled out Chertoff for delays.

[area51]

28. "President Bush was ... fully involved"

Okay, so the buck does stop w/GW Hoover. He then accepts the blame for the debacle of knowingingly allowing people -- taxpayers, mind you -- to die.

[Catfight]

29. La la la....repugs don't like reality, they can't hear us...la la la...nt