Editorial: Feel-good report on Katrina

Friday, Feb. 24, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.

The White House is being kind to itself in a report released Thursday on the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. The report mimics a trend these days, one in which people who have erred badly insist that everyone just "move forward" rather than spend time analyzing what they did wrong.

A House committee report, however, took a different tack in a report it released on Feb. 15. Even without the full complement of documents it had requested from the Bush administration, the committee issued a blistering report that held the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff partly responsible for the tragically inept response to the vicious storm that lashed three Gulf Coast states in late August.

Such soul searching is not part of the White House report. Instead it has more of a "lessons learned" theme that directs the readers' attention to what must be done before the start of the next hurricane season June 1. "We will learn from the lessons of the past to better protect the American people," President Bush said Thursday after the report was released.

Such a comment is merely rhetoric intended to spin the story toward a conclusion that fault need not be pinpointed, that government was confronting a force never before encountered and could not have been expected to efficiently respond.

The report portrays Bush, who was vacationing during and after Katrina struck despite having received urgent advance warnings of the impending disaster, as a strong, far-sighted leader who was the unfortunate victim of circumstances. "The response to Hurricane Katrina fell far short of the seamless, coordinated effort that had been envisioned by President Bush when he ordered the government to craft disaster response plans two years earlier," it says, without inquiring as to why he didn't check on his vision to ensure it had materialized.

Essentially, the White House report recommends fixes that should have been standard procedure in the first place if true leadership had been exerted. The White House report is essentially a feel-good piece that tries to assure everyone that monumental holes in federal emergency planning - such as a lack of adequate communications gear - will be filled within a few months.

Will the White House be able to "move forward" in reality as well as it does on paper? The test will be this summer and fall, when more strong hurricanes are expected to hit.

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