OPINIONS
U.S. finds scapegoat in FEMA’s ex-director
With the year anniversary of the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina now having come and gone, many people still know who was to blame for the lack of aid given to victims in the Gulf Coast.
Or at least they think they do.
Former FEMA director Michael Brown was tagged as being everything from inept, to self-involved to unqualified for his position, despite the fact that he had already helped in disaster relief for Hurricane Andrew as well as the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
Katrina was an event unparalleled in U.S. History. To blame one person for what went wrong with the rescue efforts for the disaster was not only unreasonable, but it also accomplishes the Bush administrations of shifting focus of shifting responsibility.
Brown was tortured in the media following the disaster, largely due to the fact that the administration pegged him as the guy not getting the job done.
Brown bounced back recently appearing on many of the major news stations as well as doing an interview for Playboy magazine.
Brown points out that while people were so quick to blame him for everything that went wrong during Katrina, the general public didn’t see what was going on behind the scenes.
Brown admits his biggest mistake was going along with the administration by telling everyone in the media that operations were going “fine” when in fact they were anything but.
“I beat myself up everyday for lying and that was working smoothly when it wasn’t,” Brown said on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews.
When Brown went on the air saying that everything was ok, he came off looking like the incompetent one.
The problem though, is if Bush and his administration had the solutions to the problems going on in New Orleans and elsewhere in the gulf coast than why didn’t they come to Brown’s side rather than hanging him out to dry?
They didn’t have answers yet Bush took little responsibility for what was going on, playing dumb saying that he was uninformed about what was going on.
Uniformed? The President of the United States has a responsibility more than anyone else to be informed about what is going on in his country.
There is also the fact that videotapes proved Brown updated Bush on everything going on in Katrina.
It is frustrating that we live in an age of unaccountability. How can one be surprised though, when there is backstabbing and lying going on at the very height of our federal government?
Volume
44, Issue 2. Today is
Nick Kosmider
Mesa Legend