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By The Skanner News | The Skanner News
Published: 15 March 2006

The video of President George W. Bush lounging at his Texas ranch the day before Hurricane Katrina struck is disturbingly similar to the footage of the casual way he reacted to news of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.


This is the same Bush who, time and again, has primed his public image as a tough-talking, swaggering guy who moves quickly and decisively when a crisis hits — but Bush has been anything but a no-nonsense taskmaster in the face of disaster.


His first reaction to Sept. 11 was befuddlement and fear. It took him days to swing into action. His next response was to duck and dodge criticism of his glacial response to the attacks. His last ploy was to let others take the heat for his fumbles.


Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was the perfect patsy for Bush's Sept. 11 failing. At the Sept. 11 commission hearings, she fervently defended her boss from the charge that he fell asleep at the national security wheel before, during and after the attacks. She strongly made the case that there was no laxity in the Bush administration's fight against terrorism.


Counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke, who charged that the administration had slumbered on the terrorism fight, didn't have a chance to rebut anything she said. The last word was hers. Rice was a good and loyal Bush soldier and shouldered some of the blame for his Sept. 11 lapses. This helped keep some sheen on her boss's Teflon shield.


Now there's Katrina. Bush tore another page from the same dodge-and-blame playbook. It took him days to get relief efforts up to speed in New Orleans. He then dodged criticism that there was incompetence, indifference and even racism in his laggard response to the crisis. Finally, he dumped full blame for the failures on Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown.


It worked. Much of the public and many in the media hammered Brown for the dire plight of the hurricane-devastated evacuees. Bush quickly took the cue and canned Brown. Brown, as Rice, played the fall-guy role well, kept silent and bowed out quietly. With the surfacing of Bush's damning Katrina video, he's found his spine and blames the Katrina bumbles on the "fog of bureaucracy." That's a clever way to avoid saying that the man at the top didn't do his job.


The Katrina video is graphic proof that Bush did more than fumble the preparedness ball — he ignored it. Brown begged those at the government's disaster operation center to do whatever it took to get hurricane relief efforts going. He also urged that National Guard units be prepared to quickly move in and aid relief efforts. Brown also showed some sensitivity to those that would have to be herded into the Superdome to escape floodwaters. He demanded that provisions be made for their medical and safety needs.


Bush knew all of this and did nothing. Bush also was told that when Katrina struck the levees could be breached. Yet, four days after the storm hit and the floodwaters tore through the city, Bush lied and publicly stated that no one anticipated that the levees would break. Not once during the briefing, as the video shows, did Bush ask one question about them.


The worst part of this is that so little has changed in the months since the Katrina debacle. Thousands of evacuees are still scattered in far-flung cities across the country, many without jobs and living under the daily threat that they can be evicted from the hotels and apartments in which they have been temporarily housed. And thousands of New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents whose homes were severely damaged or destroyed still have not received any compensation for their losses. Bush has remained mute about their predicament.


New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana officials were justifiably livid at the disgraceful shots of the president's men in crisis, and their boss blithely doing nothing to deal with it. The videotape is smoking-gun proof that Bush is not, nor never has been, the man of action that the president's spin-masters have made him out to be. His embarrassingly low poll ratings are firm testament that much of the public has finally wised up to his failings.


But low ratings or not, Bush is still the president and that won't change for the next couple of years. The frightening thing is that a Sept. 11-type terror attack or a Katrina disaster can happen again. If it does, Bush will again dodge responsibility for it and relentlessly hunt for scapegoats.


It won't lessen the human suffering of a disaster, but it will again expose the fraud that Bush is a tough guy president.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for www.blacknews.com.

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