A heckuva job by 'Brownie' after all?

[cal04]

Experts now say that former FEMA Director Michael Brown was less to blame than his boss for bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina.
For months now, former FEMA Director Michael Brown has been the butt of late-night TV jokes and a punching bag on Capitol Hill for his handling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.

Surprisingly, redemption seems at hand. Bolstered by Wednesday's release of a videotape and transcripts of federal disaster response sessions in the days just before and after Katrina, Brown and his team are seen as sounding the alarm of an impending disaster. In contrast, President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff appear impassive the day before Katrina struck as officials predicted that the levees around New Orleans could fail. The president asked no questions. Now the Bush administration is stepping up the attacks on the former Federal Emergency Management Agency director for sidestepping the chain of command, and the same disaster experts who excoriated Brown, some even joking about his previous experience with the International Arabian Horse Association, are coming to his side.

On Thursday, Knight Ridder interviewed 12 experienced disaster experts, and most believe Brown should not be the scapegoat. All but one of them -- which included Republicans and Democrats, two former Federal Emergency Management Agency directors, former state and local disaster chiefs and academics who collectively have more than a century's experience -- said Thursday that they had a hard time buying the Bush administration's line. Seven of them said they were inclined to believe Brown's version of events. Four said both Brown and Chertoff were at fault and President Bush was especially culpable for hiring them. Only one said he faulted Brown more.

`I BELIEVE BROWN'

Nearly all of them chided the Bush administration for merging FEMA into the new and massive Department of Homeland Security in 2003. ''I believe Brown,'' said James Lee Witt, the FEMA director during the Clinton administration. ``Look what he tried to warn them of, and nobody listened.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/14005213.htm

[Redstone]

1. I gotta say the guy is stepping up big right now. Naming names, not

pulling any punches, not covering any asses.

And those videotapes certainly back up his story, don't they?

Redstone

[acmavm]

4. Yes, isn't it a bitch when the guy who jokingly called himself a 'fashion

god' and looked like the dumbest SOB that ever got a government job turns out to be the only one playing with a full deck.

I sure hate it when things turn out like this. Our government should not be lying to us like this. It is, in my eyes, treason.

[pacalo]

5. I agree.

I have to give him props for not taking it sitting down, especially since he's standing up against an administration who fights so dirty.

[DinahMoeHum]

2. Look at it this way: Brown intends to take people down with him. . .

the ones who set him up as the fall guy.

:evilgrin:

[MSgt213]

3. How was the President engaged in all of this. The WH released the

transcripts of the other days to show how the President was asking questions, even though he asked now in the tape. But it sounds to me that Bush was just saying crap. "The full resources of the government are behind you." Without any actual resources.

[katty]

6. now he is Really doing a hecava job on the WH

[Lindacooks]

7. He'd better stay out of small planes.

eom