Paul Krugman makes a compelling case this morning that the administration’s failures with Katrina are reminiscent of another, equally tragic failure in Iraq. I think he might have missed one.
In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq’s infrastructure.
The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way – city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn’t arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam’s fall – the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency – was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer’s brother was in charge of private-sector development.
The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a “turkey farm,” a source of patronage jobs.
All of that’s true, of course, but I’ve also noticed that similar, denial-driven rhetoric keeps popping up.
Dick Cheney, for example, inexplicably called Iraq an “enormous success story.” Similarly, Tom DeLay said the government’s response to the Katrina crisis has been “a phenomenal accomplishment by everybody involved.”
The list goes on. Condoleezza Rice said, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,” despite the fact that experts had been predicting just that for several years. Similarly, Bush said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” despite the fact that everyone was anticipating just that.
When most of the country looked for Donald Rumsfeld to resign, the president said he thought the Defense Secretary is doing a “great job.” And when the entire reality-based community marveled at FEMA Director Mike Brown’s incompetence, Bush said “Brownie” is doing “a heck of a job.”
All we need now is for Dick Cheney to explain that the misery of the people of the Gulf Coast is in its “last throes.”