Brownie Talks Bull

Our pal Brownie, fresh from being rehired as a consultant on Hurricane Katrina events, is now using his new position to claim basically no responsibilty for the major screw-up that left hundreds of thousands of Katrina refugees stranded without food and water in the wake of the storm. Appearing before a special congressional panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate government action in the wake of the hurricane, Brownie vigorously defends himself and shifts the blame for the catastrophe to anyone at all. Check it out:

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," two days before the storm hit, Brown told a special congressional panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe.

Um, no. Your biggest mistake was not getting aid to those who needed it in a timely fashion.

"The people of FEMA are being tired of being beat up, and they don't deserve it," Brown said

Okay, he's right. Maybe the "people" of FEMA who worked tirelessly in the aftermath of Katrina don't deserve to be beat up, especially when the blame should really fall on their director, who got canned for showing absolutely no competence or leadership.

Brown said the lack of an effective evacuation of New Orleans before the storm was "the tipping point for all the other things that went wrong." He said he had personally pushed Blanco to order such an evacuation.

Irrelevant to your job at hand, Brownie, which was to handle a national disaster. What if this had been (God forbid) a terrorist attack, with no advance warning or time to evacuate? FEMA, under your leadership, would not have been equipped to handle anything but a disaster that has been evacuated of potential victims in advance of it? An absurd argument.

When asked by Rep. Harold Rogers (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky, whether the lack of an ordered evacuation was "the proximate cause of most people's misery," Brown said, "Yes."

Um, no. The proximate cause of most people's misery, notably in New Orleans, was being stranded in fetid conditions with no food, water, or medical care. Regardless of whether or not they had evacuated in advance. FEMA's job is to handle the aftermath, regardless of whether Nagin and Blanco were entirely at fault for the botched evacuation.

Brown in his opening statement said he had made several "specific mistakes" in dealing with the storm, and listed two.
One, he said, was not having more media briefings.
As to the other, he said: "I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences, and work together. I just couldn't pull that off."

Uh, media briefings. Right. That would have been very helpful to the starving masses. More news briefings, so that you could have done more of this:

Brown also said he was "just tired and misspoke" when a television interviewer appeared to be the first to tell him that there were desperate residents at the New Orleans Convention Center.
Brown testified that he had already learned, one day before the interview, that people were flocking to the center.

I don't think more news briefings would have been that helpful, Brownie, considering your lack of talent in getting the story straight.

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!