Brown Shifts Blame for Katrina Response

Brown Shifts Blame for Katrina Response

A combative Michael Brown blamed the Louisiana governor, the New Orleans mayor and even the Bush White House that appointed him for the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina in a fiery appearance Tuesday before Congress. In response, lawmakers alternately lambasted and mocked the former FEMA director...

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I'm gettin' popcorn for this one...

I'll look for the video and post here.

EDIT: Video is on the left of same page. Also available on CNN.

[edit on 27-9-2005 by loam]

I saw it on the news.

Brown was supposed to be coordinating disaster relief for the Katrina victims. Disaster relief didn't show up until Friday. EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY was watching the horror on TV from Monday to Friday. ABC News caught this clown in several lies and misrepresentations of the facts. And this guy had the nerve to get an attitude with the congressmen for questioning the lame job he did?? Brown's idea of "coordinating" was to tell the governor and mayor to evacuate the city. FEMA is supposed to step in immediately when city and state government is overwhelmed and clearly, they were overwhelmed. Brown had the nerve to say that he thought he did a good job. Not a single congressmen who questioned him agreed with that, from what I saw. Dude was a Horse Trainer for cryin' out loud. Has anyone here ever seen anything in his resume that indicates that he was ever qualified to run FEMA? ANYONE???

"I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn. "Because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren't capable to do the job."

"You get an F-minus in my book," said Rep. Gene Taylor (news, bio, voting record), D-Miss.

At several points, Brown turned red in the face and slapped the table in front of him.

"So I guess you want me to be the superhero, to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans," Brown said.

"What I wanted you to do is do your job and coordinate," Shays retorted.

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," Brown told a special panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe

Lousiana wasn't dysfunctional. Brown is dysfunctional. This man is a perfect example of how people who have 0% leadership quality and are vastly underqualified to do the job they were hired to do shouldn't be in charge of anything, particularly when people's lives are at stake. I don't hear Bush or ANYONE ELSE trying to defend Brown. Know why? Because anyone who defends this pathetic excuse for a human being will look like a complete and total IDIOT!!

@ Mirlin11

I live in Louisiana and it is dysfunctional.

Decades of knowing that the New Orleans levees could only stand a Cat 3 hurricane and not doing anything about it proves that.

Not following your own evacuation plans proves that also.

The complete collapse of a major cities police force shows it. At least the Police Chief had the decency to resign. Blanco and Naygin need to follow suit.

When you have the previous 3 out of 4 governors of Louisiana (excluding the one in jail on racketeering charges) making a plea not to send money to Louisiana officials directly also proves the dysfunctionallity of this corrupt state.

My major question is how was the blame placed on FEMA in the 1st place?

The city of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana failed miserably and just threw up their hands and yelled "help". Then they expected the feds to be there the next day?

Seems to me the blame was automatically shifted to FEMA without ever being put where it needed to be in the first place....the local and state government.

[edit on 2-10-2005 by Carseller4]

Originally posted by Mirlin11
Dude was a Horse Trainer for cryin' out loud. Has anyone here ever seen anything in his resume that indicates that he was ever qualified to run FEMA? ANYONE???

Well, I do know someone who knew him when he was in the Dallas area Arabian Horse Club, and she said that he was totally incompetant at all club positions he filled. Sluffed off, didn't take charge, couldn't find competant people (though the club has lots of them)... etc. I gather that the club improved considerably when he went on to other things.