Ineptitude led to redudancy which led to bureacracy which led to death.

[Rex_Goodheart]

Four years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, the wiser among us preached hard AGAINST some "Department of Homeland Security." It's new purpose was to coordinate the intelligence coming from the CIA and the FBI, and to prepare and respond to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Sounds good in principle, right? Wrong... not to any executive with any amount of sense and experience.

Communications between Agency A and Agency B are almost never solved by creating Agency C. Now, instead of problems between A and B, you've created two additional pipelines with a potential for miscommunication: A-C and B-C, along with additional cost.

The easier, better solution if the director of the CIA couldn't communicate with the director of the FBI was to make one the boss of the other, and one agency subservient to the other.

It makes very little sense, either, for a Homeland Secretary to be requisitioning and/or employing military resources to a devastated area. Our Department of Defense could have handled that, without all the red tape between two Cabinet Departments.

We learn from Newsweek this week that Federal officials delayed for THREE DAYS while people in New Orleans were going hungry and thirsty because the lines of authority were unclear. We had the ridiculous scene yesterday where Michael Chertoff, Michael Brown, Donald Rumsfeld, and General Honore were all on TV in New Orleans telling us what had to be done. Too many damn bosses, and too much inaction.

Streamlining is the answer. Bureaucracy is not.

Is it mere accident that Castro can evacuate 1.5 million residents from a Category 5 area without significant loss of life?

The creation of this Homeland cabinet department was just another case of Bush's ineptitude. He should have lobbied hard for simplifying, rather than blurring. He should have just said no and saved our money. He should have vetoed any Congressional vote for such a cabinet, and then he should have explained why. And then he certainly should not have appointed his incompetent, inexperienced friends to positions of life and death.