BCT Editorial – 2/15/06

This page was last updated on February 25, 2006.

Asleep at the wheel; Editorial; Beaver County Times; February 15, 2006.

In its zeal to promote big government and to bash a Republican president, the Times will never identify the true problem. Even if the feds did everything wrong, we need to remember local and state governments are the folks primarily responsible for dealing with disasters. Regardless of who’s in charge and how much money we throw at the problem, any “solution” that attempts to make the federal government primarily responsible for dealing with disasters is doomed to fail. There’s no doubt the feds have a role to play, but it should be only to provide assistance beyond the capabilities of local and state governments.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“GOP reports on response to Hurricane Katrina is no whitewash of White House

“How bad was the federal government’s bungling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster?

“So bad that even House Republicans couldn’t whitewash what happened.

“The Washington Post reported Sunday that a draft report that is scheduled to be released today concludes that Hurricane Katrina exposed the U.S. government’s failure to learn the lesson of Sept. 11, 2001.”

[RWC] Does it seem odd the Times would publish an editorial about a report it has not yet read, or is it just me? The report is posted at http://katrina.house.gov/.

By mentioning only the federal government, this paragraph is an example of what the Times itself refers to in other editorials as a “true lie.” The report which the Times didn’t read actually says, “The failure of local, state, and federal governments to respond more effectively to Katrina — which had been predicted in theory for many years, and forecast with startling accuracy for five days — demonstrates that whatever improvements have been made to our capacity to respond to natural or man-made disasters, four and half years after 9/11, we are still not fully prepared.”

“The report, which is more that 600 pages long, includes 90 findings of failures at all levels of government and lays primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides.”

[RWC] I read the entire “Executive Summary of Findings” and it does NOT lay “primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides.” The report nails all levels of government. Remember, the editorial author hadn’t read any of the report when he wrote the editorial.

“‘If 9/11 was a failure of imagination then Katrina was a failure of initiative. It was a failure of leadership,’ the reports [sic] preface states. ‘In this instance, blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision making needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina’s horror.’

“What makes this report especially revealing is that House Democrats chose not to participate (although two did informally), believing that Republicans would give the administration a free ride.”

[RWC] Get ready, the editorial is about to give Democrats cover for not participating in the review. In summary, the editorial will claim it was the Republicans’ fault the Democrats abdicated their responsibility.

“They had good reason to fear a less-than-forthright investigation. House Republicans have a history of seeing, hearing and speaking no evil when it comes to the Bush White House, in effect abdicating their checks-and-balances responsibility under the Constitution.”

[RWC] Ah, another drive-by accusation by an editorial author. If “Republicans have a history of seeing, hearing and speaking no evil …,” why didn’t the editorial cite an example?

The only times I’ve seen Republicans not investigate something was when Senate Republicans refused to do anything about official Senate Democrat documents that showed 1) Democrat members of the Judiciary Committee colluded with the NAACP to delay court nominees to affect cases before the court, and 2) Democrat members of the Senate Intelligence Committee intended to manipulate investigations for political gain.

“But the Bush administration’s Katrina foul-ups were too obvious for even mouths-shut, ears-plugged, eyes-closed House loyalists to ignore.”

[RWC] Even though the author concedes the report is “critical,” he still finds a way to get into name-calling.

“More reports are on the way, with the Senate and White House expected to release their reviews of the response to Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath in the coming week. If nothing else, the critical report by House Republicans will serve as a benchmark by which to judge them.”