Commissions are worthless, and everyone outside of David Broder knows it. They are "blue ribbon panels" who meet, set rules for their meetings, ask questions, have staff who write a report, ignore the report, draw their own conclusions, get thanked for their work by a grateful President whom they probably whitewashed, and disappear.
The 9/11 Commission produced a best-selling book, and gave us the idea of an "Intelligence Czar." And, indirectly, Michael Chertoff and the Department of Homeland Security.
In the words of Daffy Duck: "Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin."
The Warren Commission gave us three decades of conspiracy theory, culminating in JFK.
Need I say more?
We don't need another commission; we need congressional investigations. Now. Update: as noted in the transcript below, DeLay "cancelled" Congressional hearings. Apparently, that "cancellation" is no longer operative. "The Hammer" isn't what he used to be.
Atrios is also, rightly, upset about how the press is covering Katrina and it's aftermath. Here, we have a more serious problem. Consider Aaron Brown's colloquy on the memo the AP reported on last night:
And now CNN has just obtained a memo this evening that's going to add even more grist for the mill. This memo was reported on earlier by the Associated Press. And it basically is a memo from the FEMA director, Michael Brown, to Mr. Chertoff basically asking for more than 1,000 volunteers right after the storm hit, for more than 1,000 volunteers to rush to the Gulf region in order to deal with the aftermath of Katrina.
This is obviously going to lead even more critics to say, why was he getting -- the FEMA director getting more voluntaries to respond after the storm hit, not before? Now, it's important to note that Homeland Security officials are telling CNN that this is not that significant because in fact they had some people prepositioned.
But, again, this is going to be even more grist for the mill for the people calling for Michael Brown's head -- Aaron.
BROWN: I want to go back to your meeting in a second, but just a couple more things on the memo.
I wouldn't exactly use the word rush. He gives these 1,000 Homeland Securities officials two days to arrive on the scene, according to the memo, which I looked at just before coming up. That included one day of training before they headed for the Gulf. And he said that one of their responsibilities would be to ensure that FEMA was portrayed in a positive light, some concern about the P.R. impact of the storm itself.
The memo was written five hours after the storm made landfall in New Orleans. On the DeLay point, it's a little difficult to compare Mississippi and Alabama to New Orleans. These are apples and oranges in terms of what the disaster itself was. All that said, where does this all go in the Congress? Is there going to be a move to move FEMA out of Homeland Security? Do we get the head of Michael Brown and then it all goes away? Other than the kind of sniping that's going on, where does this head?
HENRY: Well, I think, first of all, you're right. FEMA is very likely to be pulled out of the Department of Homeland Security, and here's why. Even Republican Senator Trent Lott, who lost his own home in the storm, said today that he believes it was a mistake.
Important to note, not just by the Bush administration, but by this Congress, Democrats and Republicans, who voted for the Department of Homeland Security and decided to -- instead of having FEMA as an independent agency -- as Trent Lott says, it should be an independent agency that reports directly to the big man, as Trent Lott said, so there's none of this red tape in the middle. There's a FEMA director reporting directly to the president.
Where does this go? Very interesting development as well tonight. Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton has been calling for an independent commission, beyond the sniping, to actually investigate what went wrong, so it doesn't happen again. Tom DeLay said, no way, we're not going to do that.
And then it's very interesting that, even more importantly, there have been -- talk about a lot of congressional hearings. Well, Republican Congressman Tom Davis earlier tonight announced he's moving ahead with hearings in the House in order to investigate what went wrong. Tom DeLay did not know about that until word started spreading.
He just told some of us reporters that those hearings are not going forward. Tom DeLay is going to stop these hearings from going forward. That's going to leave Democrats to charge that Republicans on the Hill are trying to sweep this under the carpet and they're trying to cover up for the Bush administration. I don't think it's going to be just sniping.
One is left wondering how this report:
The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.
Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."
Turned into that discussion. These weren't, after all, more National Guard troops to help ferry in supplies FEMA said it couldn't get in, anyway.
More questions than answers.
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