Did you all see Waxman's letter to Chertoff?

[Carolab]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/9/1435/82827

[Mr Rabble]

1. kick. nt

[Kagemusha]

2. Seems simple enough in the end...

It seems that:

FEMA's budget for disaster planning was slashed by Congress. FEMA was underwriting the physical costs of the conference, whereas this private firm was responsible for organizing the conference itself as it had done for the original Hurricane Pam ("Stage One") exercise where experts were brought together under one roof to hammer out a scenario. Then, when it came time, this year, to actually plan how to DO SOMETHING about the scenario, FEMA shut it down. After all Congress (in accepting the Bush Administration's budget recommendations!!) had slashed their funding for this so it's little surprise that among the efforts slashed, was this conference here. The corp that FEMA had outsourced "planning" to, could not hold the conference without FEMA actually paying for it; the corp is an emergency management CONSULTING company. So, when FEMA pulled the plug, that was that.

And apparently a highly bastardized version was held in August of this year.

Chertoff has dismissed the original planning in '04 as a plan written by "academics". Yes, academics who are experts in the field.. but he is correct that this was not a concrete plan for action. The cruel are already calling these reports "historical documents"...

The bottom line is that Chertoff was on board when the adminstration slashed FEMA funding for a plan that would be written in order to actually be carried out, and this just happened to be the year when a hurricane actually hit. Not even a Cat 4 or 5, as it turned out - which surely would've shot the death toll much, much higher.

This isn't that hard, is it?

[Carolab]

5. Which fits my pet theory of the reason for these "exercises".

They are only trying to establish what could go wrong so they can LIHOP and CYA.

[Wetzelbill]

3. Henry Waxman is the shit

[renie408]

4. Looks like Chertoff's got some 'splaining to do n/t

[texpatriot2004]

6. That was AWESOME! N/T

[Marnieworld]

7. Yes this is very very important

I am amazed and grateful that they have this going so soon.

[texpatriot2004]

8. Wonder what's going on today with this letter? n/t