William Fisher

NEW YORK, Sep 6 2005 (IPS) — Republican spin-meisters worked furiously this week to contain the political damage to U.S. President George W. Bush from what he concedes was the government’s “unacceptable” response to Hurricane Katrina.

In one of what will doubtless be dozens of shocking revelations that will emerge over time, Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, that top federal disaster officials listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi – and were advised of the storm’s potential deadly effects.

“Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings,” the paper reported.

“He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornados to accompany the storm as it came ashore.”

“We were briefing them way before landfall,” Mayfield said. “It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.”

The Bush administration may have found some comfort in Monday’s ABC/Washington Post poll, which found that while U.S. citizens are broadly critical of government preparedness for the disaster, far fewer blame Bush personally, and public anger about the response is less widespread than some critics would suggest.

The poll found that 46 percent of people approved of Bush’s handling of the crisis, almost exactly half his 91 percent approval rating after the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001.

Two-thirds said the federal government should have been better prepared to deal with a storm this size, while three-quarters believed state and local governments in the affected areas likewise were insufficiently prepared.

Considering the media’s hostility towards Bush on the issue, these poll numbers could have been much worse. The president’s popularity has been in freefall over the past few months over the Iraq war and surging gasoline prices.

However, the body count in New Orleans, and in Jackson and Biloxi, Mississippi, has not yet begun in earnest. As the numbers of dead begin to climb, the administration is likely to face another wave of bitter criticism.

The White House damage control strategy has included dispatching the president and his top advisors to the disaster areas – twice for the president – for carefully stage-managed photo-ops with survivors and with state and local officials.

The purpose is to demonstrate that the president is on top of the situation and that he really cares about people, and to take some of the vinegar out of the stinging criticism of the federal government that has come from New Orleans’ mayor and Louisiana’s governor, who are both Democrats.

The president met with Louisiana’s governor for an hour-and-a-half Monday, and both emerged from the meeting looking and sounding like they were finally on the same page.

The Republican majority leader in the Senate, Dr. Bill Frist of Tennessee, appeared at a press conference in Washington Monday night to announce that both houses of Congress would be changing their after-recess schedule to consider legislation and hold hearings specifically focused on helping Katrina victims and communities.

Among other actions, he announced that the Homeland Security Committee of the Senate, led by Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, would be holding hearings into the Katrina disaster. No date was given.

On Capitol Hill, the administration faced widespread criticism from Democrats, and also, in a more muted manner, from his own party.

The Republican line, as expressed by Sen. Frist and many others, was to acknowledge that mistakes had been made in the week between notification of the oncoming calamity and the time the storm struck.

Some federal officials said uncertainty over who was in charge had contributed to delays in providing aid and imposing order, and officials in Louisiana complained that Washington disaster officials had blocked some aid efforts.

Local and state resources were so weakened, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, that in the future federal authorities need to take “more of an upfront role earlier on, when we have these truly ultra-catastrophes”.

But federal, state and local officials insisted that the real problem was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which Chertoff’s department oversees, failed to deliver urgently needed help and, through incomprehensible red tape, even thwarted others’ efforts to help.

In the fiscal 2005 budget, the Bush administration cut flood control funding for the Gulf States by about 50 percent. But, even fully funded, use of most of that money would not have been far enough along to have made a difference with Katrina.

The Army Corps of Engineers has known for decades that a category four or five hurricane accompanied by a storm surge would be like to breach New Orleans’ fragile defences.

Leading Democrats were far less measured in their outrage.

Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a Democrat, said today that she was so angry about federal failures and second-guessing that if she heard any more criticism of local efforts, even from the president, she might “punch” him.

In a Monday press conference, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, was visibly shaken with anger and frustration. He noted that the DHS “was founded to protect us, whether from a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The tactics are different, but the result of both is the same.”

Many others echoed his thought that, four years after 9/11, the country is still woefully unprepared to deal with mega-calamities in any organised way.

Former President Bill Clinton said the government “failed” the thousands of people who lived in coastal communities devastated by Katrina, and said a federal investigation was warranted in due time.

“Our government failed those people in the beginning, and I take it now there is no dispute about it,” Clinton told CNN. “One hundred percent of the people recognise that – that it was a failure.”

He and former President George H. W. Bush have launched the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to help raise money for those left homeless by the storm.

His wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called on Pres. Bush on Sunday to appoint an independent national commission to examine the relief effort. She also said that she intends to introduce legislation to remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and restore its previous status as an independent agency with cabinet-level status.

FEMA was an independent cabinet-level agency until it was merged into the mammoth Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans was among those most vociferous in expressing his frustration. “We’re still fighting over authority,” he told reporters. “A bunch of people are the boss. The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance.”

Homeland Security Department secretary Michael Chertoff tried to deflect the criticism of his department and FEMA by saying there would be time later to decide what went wrong. Chertoff said he recognised that the local government’s capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood.

“What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns,” he said.