Jeez Louise! Either U.S. Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff is an idiot or he is a pathological liar. It’s got to be one or the other. Chertoff told CNN that no one could have imagined the nightmare scenario that turned New Orleans into an apocalypse.
“That ‘perfect storm’ of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anyone’s foresight,” Chertoff said.
Sorry, Mikey, but a five-part series published by the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2002 laid out just such a scenario.
“It’s only a matter of time before South Louisiana takes a direct hit from a major hurricane. Billions have been spent to protect us, but we grow more vulnerable every day,” says the introduction to the series.
The U.S. Government has known for many years that the New Orleans levee system was only adequate for, maybe, a Category 3 hurricane. But Chertoff, FEMA head Michael Brown and the entire Bush administration perhaps, all act surprised. Oh. That’s right. They don’t read newspapers.
Yet in the wake of the incompetent immediate post-Katrina response by the federal government, my guess is that Chertoff or Brown or no one’s head will roll. That would indicate Bush was wrong and we all know he is never wrong, his weak mea culpas about an inadequate response notwithstanding.
So let me pose this question: If a terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon somewhere in the U.S., will the federal government claim that they never anticipated such an act could occur? No need to answer that. I know I feel much safer.