…at least that’s what this report today by the Washington Post appears to be reporting:
The 600-plus-page report lays primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides, singling out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Operations Center and the White House Homeland Security Council, according to a 60-page summary of the document obtained by The Washington Post. Regarding Bush, the report found that “earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response” because he alone could have cut through all bureaucratic resistance.[...]
[W]eaknesses identified by Sept. 11 investigators — poor communications among first responders, a shortage of qualified emergency personnel and lack of training and funding — doomed a response confronted by overwhelming demands for help.
“If 9/11 was a failure of imagination then Katrina was a failure of initiative. It was a failure of leadership,” the report’s preface states. “In this instance, blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision making needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina’s horror.”[...]
The summary obtained by The Post generally praises pre-storm evacuations by Gulf Coast leaders, but it criticizes preparations and decisions by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin (D), who knew that 100,000 city residents had no cars and relied on public transit. The city’s failure to complete its mandatory evacuation, ordered Aug. 28, led to hundreds of deaths, the report said.[...]
The investigation also condemned “hyped media coverage of violence and lawlessness, legitimized by New Orleans authorities,” for increasing security burdens, scaring away rescuers and heightening tension in the city.
That’s one report that I’m going to be interested in snagging a copy of. The Post’s writeup has it sounding fairly comprehensive and not overly biased. I would have expected a GOP-written report to gloss over the issues in Washington, and place more blame on failures at the state and municipal level. And, while it’s not unimaginable that the Post would have spun its writeup to achieve that appearance…it sounds like report may be reasonably objective.
I think the Congressional Democrats who boycotted the House committee report need a good slap across their rear ends with a clue-by-four. While their call for an independent commission is understandable and their criticizing the lack of subpoenas on White House documents is perfectly reasonable… well, it seems to me that the magnitude of the screw up last August is a call to set partisanship aside and work together to prevent such failures from reoccurring.
And, assuming again that the Post didn’t overspin the report to satisfy an editorial agenda, a hat tip to the GOP might be in order. One wouldn’t expect such a frank examination and criticism of one of their own when the Administration appears to have a chronic inability to admit to making mistakes.