Hey, Rufe the Goof, you seem to be the one who has tried to use 9/11 to divert attention away from the complete failures of the Bush administration in it's response to Katrina...

What you seem to miss, other than the point of this entire thread, is that after 9/11 it was Bush's responsibility to put in place systems to deal with the possibility of another disaster hitting the country... His initial idea of not the Departement of Homeland Security was created but here's the part that you don't seem to get... It was a department meaning that it fell in the organization chart in the executive branch... Do you know what that means, Rufe???

Well, I'm beginning to think that you don't... What it means is that the administartion of, the hiring for, the policies adopted, the systems developed all fall under the executive branch... In this case, that would be George Bush...

Think of it like this... He is the CEO and if the product either doesn't sell or id found out to be junk then the directors find another CEO...

(Bad example, BNobertm since these days the in thing is to have CEO's that loose money...)

Well, CEO or not, the president is in charge of hiring the right folks and making decisions about policies, financing, etc... That is what Bush did... Problem is that FEMA ended up being demoted from a cabinet position and was gutted... Sure, DHS, in theory, was going to take up some slack... Porblem is that neither FEMA nor DHS had claerly defined responsibilities after DHS was organized... Why???

Well, maybe the Bush administration was too focused on Iraq??? Bottom, line, they weren't doing their "homework" and they still aren't... In 2003 FEMA warned the Bushites that "its netweork for registering victims faced a 'crisis of unimaginable porportions' without an infusion of cash, but the Bush administartion has not requested the additional money and Congress has not provided it." (Wsahington Post, 6/4/06, "Ready, Set, Hurrincan")

And if another Katrina hit tomorrow the decisions regarding a federal response woud agin be a failure because there isn't one person in charge... We now have 5 PFO's, Princapl Federal Officers (and deputies) and a number of FCO's, Federal Coordinating Officers... Problem is that that even the White House has "reported that the PFO and FCO responsibilies still overlap". (ibid)

See, this is why Katrine continues to haunt Bush and his admionsitartion... ***His*** own National Response Plan calls fot the feds to act when a disater is of such magnitude that it swamps eithe local or state government yet the Bush folks haven't done either the heavy lifting to get it orgainzed properly or funded it sufficiently...

For a man who likes to boast that it's his job to protect the Amwerican people I'd say he is failing poorly at "his job"...

Bobert