What went Wrong?

The NYT has a very administration friendly version of what went wrong here. It's written by Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, but I'd be surprised if they didn't get some coaching from their Bush sources.

This NYT editorial is less of a soft touch:
It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing.

Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.


In any case, it's clear that no adequate plan existed. Any investigation that is not independent and non-partisan deserves to be dismissed out of hand as a coverup for one party or the other.

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