Congressional report condemns government response to Hurricane Katrina

Advance reports in the Washington Post on Sunday and the New York Times on Monday indicate that the House committee focused on the administration’s failure to act before or after the hurricane to prevent mass casualties. “It remains difficult to understand how government could respond so ineffectively to a disaster that was anticipated for years, and for which specific dire warnings had been issued for days,” the report notes. “This crisis was not only predictable, it was predicted.”

Coming from a panel comprised entirely of Republicans—the Democrats refused to participate on the grounds that a Republican-controlled investigation would be a whitewash—this statement is all the more significant. It refutes the claim of the Bush administration that the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina could not have been foreseen. The stunning degree of governmental ineptitude that was displayed to the world in the aftermath of Katrina has compelled such admissions from a panel chaired by a longtime congressional Republican leader, Representative Tom Davis of Virginia. At the same time, as was to be expected, the report does not call for anyone to be held accountable for the disaster and does not address any of the fundamental issues.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/katr-f14.shtml