Bury Me Broken

Joe Conason - 9/11 Anniversary, Administration Ineptitude

On the four year anniversary of the tragedy of September 11th, Joe Conason details the tragedy of cronyism and ineptitude in the Bush Administration. FEMA head Michael Brown heads the list with exaggerations and omissions on his CV and that was the beginning.

"In his pathetic insufficiency, Brown evidently was not alone at FEMA. The deputies and acting deputies and various other high-ranking pork-choppers - many of whom had landed at the agency from positions with the Bush-Cheney campaign - showed up with no experience in the hard work of saving lives and restoring communities.

But the FEMA phonies stand as symbols of far broader trouble in the Bush administration. When the Republicans first took over in 2001, and for many months thereafter, they assured us that they were the "grown-ups," and that they were "in charge." After 9/11, their flacks returned to this self-congratulatory theme, boasting that all Americans felt more secure and protected by Bush than they would if Al Gore were in the Oval Office. Their standard of accountability is to award the nation's highest decoration for public service to George Tenet and Jerry Bremer, as if nobody had noticed their notorious failures.

Pretenders such as these cannot extricate us from a debilitating war, nor can they rebuild the nation they destroyed; they have no idea how to allocate resources against terrorism, nor how to prepare for the disasters that will surely come. What the Republicans in power can do is set up photo ops, repeat spin points, concoct hollow slogans about "compassionate conservatism," and sidestep responsibility by whining about "the blame game."

The complete article can be found at:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105B.shtml

posted by niteskolar @ 6:44 PM