Krauthammer points fingers

I don't agree with everything in Charles Krauthammer's commentary this morning on Katrina and the response to it but it is more "fair and balanced" than I've come to expect from him. He begins with three places we shouldn't point fingers:

• Global Warming


There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period.

This is from a man who still denies that global warming exits. While you can't pin a single hurricane on global warming we do know that warm water is the fuel of hurricanes and that the water is warmer.

• The war in Iraq

The problem with the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq could not get to New Orleans but that National Guardsmen in Louisiana did not get to New Orleans.

I will with hold judgement on this one until I have more information.

• Tax Cuts

The notion that the allegedly missing revenue would have been spent wisely by Congress, targeted precisely to the levees of New Orleans, and that the reconstruction would have been completed in time, is a threefold fallacy. The argument ends when you realize that, as The Post noted, "the levees that failed were already completed projects."

I think Krauthammer is missing the real point here. FEMA was gutted in part to find money for tax cuts and one of the programs that was cut was the mitigation project.

Krauthammer next points fingers at the The mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana and indeed they have to shoulder some of the blame. The surprise comes when a Bush administration shill like Krauthammer actually points his finger at the administration.

The head of FEMA. Late, slow and in way over his head. On Thursday, Sept. 2, he said on national television that he didn't even know there were people in the convention center, when anybody watching television could see them there, destitute and desperate. Maybe in his vast bureaucracy he can assign three 20-year-olds to watch cable news and give him updates every hour on what in hell is going on.

Can there be any doubt now that Brown will soon be unemployed?

The president. Late, slow, and simply out of tune with the urgency and magnitude of the disaster. The second he heard that the levees had been breached in New Orleans, he should have canceled his schedule and addressed the country on national television to mobilize it both emotionally and physically to assist in the disaster. His flyover on the way to Washington was the worst possible symbolism. And his Friday visit was so tone-deaf and politically disastrous that he had to fly back three days later.

Next he is rightly critical of the pompous asses in congress and the American people.

Update
Brown has one foot out of the door.
FEMA Director Brown pulled off Katrina relief