I was about to post a thread on what yesterday's NY Times story (on the White House Katrina report) seemed to say. It said, basically, that the Dept. of Homeland Security is a failure and that we should go back (at least in large part) to cabinet-level agencies handling disaster response in their areas of expertise.
The report
does say that, alright (maybe without using the word "failure"). But when I jumped to my link to the NY Times story that I had in my "internet history" from yesterday, I read a completely re-written story!
(
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/23/politics/23cnd-katrina.html?hp&ex=1140757200&en=c81b2945936e7858&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
Oh, the title's the same. And there's still the mention of the recommendations for DoD, Justice, HHS and HUD to take (back) stronger roles in rescue & relief, law enforcement, medical response and housing after a major disaster.
But otherwise, today's story reads completely differently!Selected quotes from yesterday's version (some directly from the report):(Sorry, but I don't have a link. I suspect it's been scrubbed. These quotes are from my printed version. The following link has a similar version published yesterday in the International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/23/news/katrina.php)
"The United States is too reliant upon the insufficient and not always well-managed resources of the Department of Homeland Security".
"The federal government failed to sufficiently appreciate that there are certain types of disasters...where local and state governments will be so overwhelmed that they will largely be unable to help themselves."
“HHS… should resume control of the National Disaster Medical System… a transfer the report says in retrospect was a mistake.”
“At times, it reads more like a recitation of history… Other times, the report appears to be attempting to offer rationales for mistakes.”
Now for today’s version (see link above): There is
no mention of the words “mistake”, “insufficient”, “recitation of history” and “rationales”. Instead, the story starts with phrases like:
“If adopted, the recommendations would reverse some of the steps” (taken in the formation of DHS)
and quotes from the author of the report such as:
“There's a lot of expertise resident in the federal government.” Well, it’s nice to know that "there's lots of expertise in the federal government" (did GWB feed her that line?). But then we knew that pre-DHS. That "expertise" is called the cabinet, and the DHS didn't exactly add to it.
Oh, there are concerns expressed. But mostly, the concerns are that reverting to the old system (you know, the one that worked), would result in
“diffusing responsibilities among agencies could leave no one clearly in charge and not produce results.”Chief among those expressing these concerns is one Michael Greenberger, a law professor and homeland security expert at the University of Maryland, who says:
“This may simply be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”So, while
the White House's own report recommends some pretty drastic changes (mostly to doing things the old, "pre-Bush" way), this (new) article makes the point that
we really shouldn't do TOO much. After all, who'll be in charge?The story then makes the clear point of telling us who will still be in charge:
“Homeland Security and its Federal Emergency Management Agency will continue to be the lead federal player in disaster response efforts.”YOUSE GUYS GOT THAT?!Maybe this is par for the course. But I don’t ever recall returning to a story the next day and seeing it so drastically re-written, in both content and drift. Yesterday's story said, basically, that Homeland Security was a failure, and we need to go back to the old ways of doing things. Today's story might as well have read
"DHS is going just fine! They're still in charge, and only require a little tweaking!"No, the new byline did NOT say Karl Rove (although maybe it should have).
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