FEMA's ice brings to mind a bigger chill

[ticapnews]

Few will soon forget that late September day when 250 refrigerated trucks rolled into Portland, all packed with ice diverted from the Hurricane Katrina aftermath because . . . why? Because the Federal Emergency Management Agency had not a clue what it was doing, that's why. And now, just in time for year's end, we get a glimpse at just how much FEMA's brain freeze cost us taxpayers.
...
Beyond the hard cash taxpayers wasted keeping those trucks away from the Gulf Coast, it symbolizes a year when what we saw on television ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie," President Bush told a bewildered FEMA Director Michael Brown on Sept. 2) bore little resemblance to reality ("Can I quit now? Can I come home?" e-mailed Brown to a FEMA underling the day of the hurricane).

And Katrina was far from the only stop on the Bush administration's spin cycle.

• Consider the war in Iraq: Almost three years after the United States "liberated" the country from Saddam Hussein, only one Iraqi army battalion is capable of fighting on its own.
  
  
• Consider the war on terror: After insisting in 2004 that the U.S. government would not spy on Americans without a court order, Bush admitted last month that he's done just that.
  
  
• Throw in the indictment of Scooter Libby and the embarrassing rise and fall of Supreme Court nominee Harriet (who?) Miers, and suddenly the image of 250 trucks barreling into Maine with surplus ice doesn't seem so bizarre anymore.
  

Rather, we should remember it as a $273,942 reminder of who's been in charge the past 12 months - and will remain so in 2006, 2007 and 2,008.

Now there's a chilling thought.



http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/nemitz/060101femaice.shtml

[meti57b]

1. excellent article ... well-written!!

[justgamma]

2. Federal Emergency Management Agency had not a clue

I've said it before and I'll say it again. They kept the ice away on purpose! Brownie testified in front of Congress that he "doesn't think the government should be in the ice business. That they shouldn't supply ice for the beer and the pop"
I seem to be the only one who got enraged at that statement. Granted it was buried in a ramble from Brownie, but I heard it loud and clear. I'm freakin' amazed that no one questioning him asked him about that.

Did he think it was a big party down there?