Chertoff source of delay; White House culture of info control to blame
Get this:
Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows - Yahoo! News
“…Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government’s blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents.“
In order to not make my excerpt to long, just let me say the the sense you get from the article is that Chertoff was waiting for Bush/Rove spin management purposes — Bush being away from D.C. at the time.
It’s the Bush admin modus operandi all over again: micro-manage everything from the highest levels on down, based on the apparent sole concern of political appearances — and the mission itself be damned.
There’s something just a wee bit unhealthy about that much concern over keeping up appearances. Rumors say the bastards are even jamming ham radio down in Louisiana to try to keep a lid on the free flow of information about the disaster. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Regardless, what ought to alarm you is the realization that it wouldn’t be out of character for these guys. After all, it seems pretty consistent with an apparent policy of assaulting and intimidating journalists in Louisiana.
We’ve seen this kind of shit before, of course, from the US military outright assassinating a Reuters cameraman to police seizing the cameras of protesters because the cops want no pictures of them kicking the shit out of you for no good reason.
What did DoD do when the Abu Ghraib story came out? They addressed the problem, alright — by banning soldiers possession of cameras.
Coming full circle back to the Gulf Coast, what sort of leadership fakes levee repairs for photo opportunity purposes in the midst of a disaster recovery operation?
These people are so fucking obsessed with spin management that they can’t do anything else right. I can’t help but wonder what it is about free communications and accurate information that scares them so much.
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[…] BTW: Did I call this one: It’s the Bush admin modus operandi all over again: micro-manage everything from the highest levels on down, based on the apparent sole concern of political appearances — and the mission itself be damned. […]