MY WORD

Within six months, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown will be out of a job.

Someone has to take the fall for the debacle going on now in New Orleans, and it's Brown's agency that is mandated to take charge in this type of situation.

A lot of people are wondering why it is that the United States can rush to help tsunami victims on the other side of the world, but when it comes to our own citizens it takes five days. I wonder, too.

Yesterday I posted the front page of the Times-Picayune newspaper, the front picture of which looks like a scene from Port-a-Prince, Haiti during the uprising there. But it's not Haiti or Africa; it's in our own yard.

Today, it's the New York Daily News front page here (thanks to Newseum). Besides the picture, the copy reads: THE NEWS SAYS It is absolutely outrageous that the United States of America could not bring comfort to tens of thousands of forlorn, frightened, sick, and hungry souls earlier than it did. Who is at fault for nothing less than a national scandal?

And it's editorial was even more pointed:

But yesterday, visiting the stricken Gulf Coast before signing off on more than $10 billion in preliminary aid, he [President Bush] made a point of publicly thanking Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency boss Michael Brown for their tireless work. What tireless work? The weasel Brown said the anticipated high death toll is "going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings" and get out. Such compassion. Such stupidity. Many of them had no means of escape. And so they stayed behind, trapped in a doomed city as the lights went out and the poisoned waters rose. As for Chertoff, if this is the best his department can do, the homeland is not very secure at all.

Ya wanna point blame? Everyone shares in this. Besides the federal officials --- including Michael Brown --- for their incredibly slow response, state and local officials must accept responsibility for not ordering a manadatory evacuation earlier, although they knew that a major hurricane was going to, if not deal a direct hit, have a significant impact on the metro area. Also, the governor's failure to declare martial law in Orleans Parish and request military assistance earlier was a critical error in allowing the city to fall into lawlessness. She also could have gotten the transportation resources to evacuate many of those who did not have the means to leave the city.

And at least some of those who failed to leave should accept some of the blame, for not heeding the warnings. Of course, many did not have money or transportation, but some did, and could have left prior but yet chose not to. Let that be a lesson to those of us here in Florida.

But rightly or wrongly, someone has to play the fall guy. And Michael Brown is it.