Saturday, September 10, 2005

Getting Focused

While I have only the internet and CNN Japan for input over here there are few things that seem to be abundantly clear.
First of all, Karl Rove's fingerprints are all over the replacement but not firing of Brown. This is classic stuff. One of Karl's favourite strategies is to deflect the issue and to give the press an alternate target and take the heat off the Dubya Gump. We shouldn't let him get away with this again and again. Dubya has the ultimate responsibility for those he appoints. End of discussion.

Secondly, all this discussion and nit picking over the details of what went wrong and who is to blame is merely another distraction from the essence of the situation. The root cause of the whole thing is that planning for the emergency and the execution of the non plan was flawed and incomplete period. The essence of planning for an emergency or disaster is to follow, without variance, Murphy's Law. It applies to every facet of emergency planning.

  • We didn't count on the levees breaking - Murphy predicted it.
  • We didn't count on the looting and violence - Murphy did.
  • We didn't count on the failures of the pumps - Murphy was sure of it.
  • We didn't plan for so many refugees - Murphy coulda told ya.
  • We didn't know the hospitals would be out of commission - ditto
  • Ecetera, ecetera, ecetera
It's endless. The reality is that you should even plan for your plan to fail.

Any thing and everything that the adminstration is trying to use to distract us from the reality of the situation should have been part of any effective reponse plan. We need to keep hammering on the complete and utter failure of our government under the non-leadership of Dubya Gump in planning and executing a comprehensive response to the emergency. We should do it now and often and let them put it off until the time is of their own choosing. We need to counteract their spin with hard words and effective action.
There are no excuses and no crying in emergency preparedness. Absolutely none.

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