The Problem
So the White House issues its report on the failure that was the response to Katrina, but lays no blame.
They want to shift more responsibility to the Pentagon. They say there was a lack of coordination of the military effort. What they fail to mention is that the only thing that had to be done to release the military that was ready to go to work was for the Shrubbery to have picked up a telephone and given the word to the commander of the Northern Command who was sitting by the phone waiting.
The USS Bataan followed the storm to New Orleans. The Navy had forces staged at Pensacola. The Air Force had people and supplies staged at Hurlburt Field. The Army had people ready to rush in. They were all ready, and some “bent” the rules to help, but they needed a Presidential order to go to work.
The coordination problem for the military in the case of Katrina was that no one told the Shrubbery that he had to make a phone call while on vacation.
When they talked about the lack of coordination before 9/11 they skipped over the fact that coordination was the job of the President’s National Security Council. When Ms. Rice failed to do her job the system failed.
They keep creating new bureaucracies to do the jobs that the White House has always done in the past. There are more people doing less in this White House than ever before and the Federal bureaucracy keeps growing.
Adding another layer of management never has, and never will improve communications.
