Didn't the Army Corps of Engineers have plans, as far back as the mid-90's, to strengthen the levees in and around New Orleans, which were stopped by environmentalists concerned about the natural flow of the river and/or fish habitats?

As for Bush, I believe that someday there will be a Master's thesis written about him, comparing the real man to the image of him put forth by his critics.

- "Historians 100 years from now will be amazed at the history of our times - flabbergasted that so many behaved so badly while the good and true stuck to their duty in spite of it all."

I think people are more likley to remember the video of Michael Brown warning Bush in great detail about Katrina the day before the huricane made landfall. And I think many will remember the utter incompetence that the administration displayed in it's response over the following days and weeks.

And let us not forget this little nugget from our president:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" - President Bush, four days after the Storm.

Nate,

Still trying to blame Bush? The evidence is rather conclusive that President Bush was the least culpable of all public officials...and you still want to blame him?

Don't you ever get tired of it? You know, tired of twisting and turning everything in to a Bush-bashing fest? Does it ever occur to you that, just perhaps, America would be better served if you on the left would actually try to do something constructive for once?

Nate - Glad you mentioned that nugget from Dubya. If I remember the story correctly, Brown (or somebody) warned Bush that the levees could be "topped", i.e., the water could go over the top of the levees. This is not the same as breaching, where the levee breaks down and water goes through it. Although this distinction might not mean much if your house is underwater, Bush's statement was correct.

How ironic then, that the levees weren't topped, they were bottomed. OK, I'll try to post this one only ONCE.

Mark,

Would you care to share this "rather conclusive" evidence? What was your response to that video I mentioned? Did you see it?

Notice that I called out the incompetence of the administration, and as the leader of said administration, I don't think it's too much to expect the president to accept some blame. And it doesn't take too much twisting and turning to assign blame in this case. It's really very simple:

The members of the federal government who were most directly responsible for the federal reponse to a natural disater were FEMA head Michael Brown, his boss at DHS Michael Chertoff, and his boss George Bush. Of these three, Michael Brown is the ONLY ONE who can document significant effort toward preparing for this hurricane. Chertoff and Bush were warned sternly and repeatedly about the risks of Katrina (see the video above for some spectacular proof of this), and yet even the most basic elements of the expected federal response were completely missing over the following days and weeks.

Is it ALL Bush's fault? Do I think that he deliberately abdicated his responsibilty the week before Katrina came ashore? No, obviously, and that's not I said. Michael Brown rightly gets most of the blame, because this is job that he was specifically hired to do.

It is possible that Michael Brown was not competent to do his job. Regardless, he screwed up during Katrina, and he plainly admits that now. But the evidence backs him up when he says that FEMA recieved no help from DHS or the white house.

The most frustrating thing for me was the way Bush responded to criticism after the hurricane. The white house and its congressional supporters promptly embarked on a mission to place ALL of the blame on Brown and various local officials in Louisiana, and at the same time claim that neither Chertoff and Bush were adequately warned beforehand. Hence our president's buffoonish statement four days later that he didn't think anybody anticipated the breech of the levees. It became a sort of a whitch hunt, with Brown being grilled in congressional hearings, and rumors of criminal charges floating about in the press.

But then, did you notice how the witch hunt sort of ended after that video was aired, and how the white house got real quiet about the whole thing? Their only just now starting to talk about it, along with dems, now that election season is upon us.

And Mark, I feel compelled to point out that I am not "on the left". I abhor the dishonesty of our president's treatment of the whole fiasco, and I am supremely angered by the way the federal government has wasted my money. I don't live in Louisiana, and I didn't elect anyone there. I understand that much of Lousiana's trouble right now is caused by corruption at the local level. But that has NOTHING to do with the buggering that we taxpayers have received courtesy of FEMA and DHS.

Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff were both appointed by Bush, who lauded both of them with the characteristic white-house poetics. Together, under the direction of the president, they crafted their respective agencies into a single bureaucratic monster incapable of providing even the most basic level of service during the worst natural disaster in American history.

It is a fair question to ask, whether the Bush adminsistration's single-minded focus on terrorism has compromised the government's ability to respond to natural disasters, but white house officials positively bristled when confronted with the question, and Bush has stubbornly refused to address it even tagentially, preferring instead to market his involvement in the cleanup effort.

I don't think you have to be on the left or the right to be angry about this. I wish everyone were.

Nate,

What about Mayor Nagin (?spelling), or Govenor Blanco? I seem to remember that Nagin chose to use the Superdome and Convention Center, and not to use a fleet of school busses that later were flooded and ruined.

According to my niece, who was a Tulane student, it was local officials who put off the evacuation, and never used their own evacuation plan. I know I heard about the last when all of this was going on last year. Why would this be the Federal Government's fault? It is the local government that failed.

"The bottom line is, Katrina's storm surge did not wash the wall away. As you may remember, water had been seeping under the floodwall at the break location for about a year before Katrina. The ground under the levee was soaked and ready to give at any moment..."

That was then. This is now.

Are there any other "disasters in waiting" out there that the President should be worried about?
This administration always seems to be reacting to things. Nobody could have predicted 9/11. Nobody could have predicted Katrina.
Well, can we try to predict the next disaster, and maybe head it off,
rather than play the blame game for another 3 years?

I'm not sure you were hear when we first discussed this Nate but I'll go over it again for you.

First off, you might want to check out the ICS system (NIMS) that emergency response teams nation wide use during an emergency. There's a nice introductory class available from FEMA. (FEMA Independent Study Program - 100 Introduction to Incident Command System. http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is100.asp )

For those who don't want to learn how emergency response works I'll give a quick review. The ICS system works from the GROUND UP. It is up to those who are there to start calling in support. If they don't call, it doesn't show up. Also, if there's not proper communications even those who show up won't be allowed on. Did you know that if you're a trained emergency person and you just "show up" at a scene you're not allowed on? If you weren't called you are not supposed to be there until you are folded into available resources.

My point is, the President isn't anywhere near the top of the control list in an emergency. Hell, neither is FEMA until they either join the IC and form a join command or the IC hands command over to FEMA. Am I saying the Feds didn't do some things wrong? No, but I am saying it is stupid to put a huge junk, or even the majority of the blame at the Federal level when ALL emergency responses in America work from the ground up.

To the best of my knowledge the levee system in New Orleans was built and maintained by the USACE. That makes the failure of the levees more of a federal responsibilty, than one of the local and state governments. Now before someone jumps down my throat, notice I didn't say it was the presidents fault, nor am I saying that levee board of N.O. or the state of LA have no fault. However, from the strict point of talking about the levees (not the evacuation, not the rescue, or clean-up) then most of the fault belongs the USACE and the Federal Government who determines their funding.

if anyone wants to read the report by UC Berkeley go to http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~new_orleans/

it's long, but they do a great job of breaking down what happenend, and lay plenty of blame at the feet of local, state, USACE and the feds.

Hey Nate, when he said "nobody anticipated the breach of the levees," was he not merely echoing the drive-by media? Before the levees were breached, the DBM said NO "dodged the bullet."

And Nate, you may want to be careful about how you use "their," "they're," and "their."

When that movie about Flight 93 came out earlier this year, many people were crying "It's too soon to show this!" Isn't it too soon to be celebrating Katrina?

Also, we need to cut Ray "Schoolbus" Nagin some slack. He implemented the evacuation plan perfectly...got himself, his family, and his furniture to Texas in a hurry...

Near as I can tell the criticism of the federal gov'ment was due to their horrible response, not the levees. We are aware Bush had nothing to do with the levees. He merely destroyed FEMA. Nice attempt at a cover though.

I find it compelling to hear people suggest that local problems should be solved a the federal government.

The founders gave the federal goverment very limited powers for a reason. The problem with the levee's and other time bombs should be local problems to deal with, not a presidents.

Nate,

I didn't say he wasn't culpable at all - just that he was least culpable. And in spite of the fact that he had no direct charge of the levees or the State and local response, President Bush has manfully taken the whole blame for Katrina upon himself...he's had not one harsh word for anyone up or down the line - nothing but praise, even some praise for people who didn't deserve it.

You see, President Bush thinks of the nation - not the political advantage to be wrung out of national tragedy. While you guys are absorbed in cooking the books to make it look like President Bush had a weather machine which created Katrina for the express purpose of flooding a poor, black neiborhood, President Bush has been getting the job done.

That is what I mean when I ask, are you tired of it? Does pointing your finger at Bush make you feel better? Make you feel like an honoest-to-God man?

Kinda reminds me what happened after Floyd here in North Carolina. Dennis came in, soaked the ground, went out, came back, went out. SO the ground and water ways were soaked to capacity.

While there was alot of flooding, the Gov, who was a Democrat, have to give him props where props are due, took care of it, with minimal help from FEMA, like is supposed to happen. He didn't have crying jags like Blanco.

You may be completely right slaw, but unfortunetly no one is focusing on that part, they're focusing on the response. To folks like I Ed I once again have to point out my earlier comments and reiterate the President has next to no direct control of a federal response. FEMA doesn't come in unless the LOCALS call in. Until that happens and until the local agencies either share or give up incident command anyone brought in by the feds aren't allowed on scene.

Mark,
Yes it makes me feel like more of a man (?) to hold elected officials responsible for their mistakes, that's why I do it, not because I am infuriated by their lack of stewardship for taxpayer resources or anything like that.

Sorry for the sarcasm, Mark, but you're not really arguing with me here. You're just repeating your opinions, and putting mine down by assuming that I must have some extraneous anti-bush agenda. Come on, tell me something I don't know. Tell me that I am wrong about that video, that I didn't see and hear what I think I did. I am open to an argument, and I would actually prefer to believe that my government is using its (and my) resources wisely.

And what in tarnation does "least culpable" mean? Does it mean less culpable than Dick Cheney, or Ted Kenedy? Or does it simply mean that he shouldn't be fired like Michael Brown was. If you mean the latter, then I agree with you, but at that point we're again not really arguing. You've already told me that I'm wrong, but I want you tell me WHY I'm wrong. Since you continue to parrot the white house's marketing spin to me, though, I'm starting to lose interest.

Gozer,
If I remember correctly, there was a problem between Nagin and Blanco on who should have been calling for Federal help. As a result, neither did until the pics were on the news. Then it became the Feds fault for not coming in right away, "because they should have known they were needed." I guess mind-reading is required of a FEMA rep.

Gozer,
I never proposed that we blame Bush for the failures in Louisisana's ICS implementation. And the debates about ground up vs. top down management are sort of beside the point here. The resources that LA needed from the feds was not forthcoming, regardless of the particulars of the local command structure. Lousiana requested, and was promised by FEMA, several hundred busses that did not arrive in time for the evac. Blanco made many direct requests just before and after the 29th for water, food, 40,000 national guard troops, the list goes on. Bush, Chertoff, and Brown made a big show of saying that the federal government was fully prepared to supply such requests, but the nest week saw very little of it materialize. The busses, for example, were not delivered until Sept 3.

I am not saying that natural disaster response should primarily be the job of the federal government; I am not debating the merits of local versus federal government in these situations. But no matter what you believe on that topic, the fact remains that our president has spent years cheerleading for his the new and improved dept. of homeland security, but when push came to shove, that agency and its now fully intregated child FEMA were unable to provide much of even the small amount of support expected of them. You can certainly blame Blanco and Nagin for their own incompetence, but that doesn't excuse the feds.

And here's something else to remember: nobody, not Blanco, not Bush or anybody in his administration, NOBODY can hide by claiming to be surprised at the severity of the disaster, because they had all participated in the hurricane Pam exercise for just such a disaster in 2004. Hurricane Katrina was very similar Pam, and the Pam scenario included widespread overtopping of the levees. In fact, in the analysis of Pam it was concluded that such an overtopping present a GREATER flooding threat to New Orleans than a levee breach would.

This is what is so laughable about Bush's "i don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" quip, and his subsequent attempts to clarify. Pam's overtopping was specifically designed to prepare federal and local governments to respond to WORSE flooding than what Katrina brought. President Bush was warned, to his face and no uncertain terms by the director of the National Hurricane Center, that Katrina presented the risk of just such an overtopping. Breaching, overtopping, we can't really be certain that Bush (or Chertoff for that matter) even knew the difference. It doesn't matter, because they both made it seem like they couldn't do anything about it anyway.

So then what do we get for all that? We get a federal agency unable to provide assistance to an already crippled local emergency response. We get a federal agency that appears almost completely unable to account for a good deal of the money it's spending (see the link in Mark's update above). And we get our President saying "well gosh, who could've known?".

kjstrouble,
I am not blaming the feds for Louisiana's bungled evacuation plans. And I have a niece who works at starbucks who says that keefer said "their" when he really meant "there", so there!

President Bush thinks of the nation - not the political advantage to be wrung out of national tragedy.

It's so quaint that you believe this.

Since you continue to parrot the white house's marketing spin to me, though, I'm starting to lose interest.

Good--maybe you'll take your disinterested arse somewhere else. Try Daily Kos or DU. But work on your spelling/word usage.

IT WAS MOTHER NATURE'S FAULT, YOU STUPID TROLL MORONS!!! WHY IN THE HELL ARE WE HAVING A ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF A TRAGEDY SUCH AS KATRINA?

The answer is simple--we have an election in 70 days, and the DBM needs to fuel the Bush-bash parade. No mention of the Plame-flameout, though. It doesn't fit the DBM template. More media bias...

Well at least someone replies to my comments. :p

Let me go through a few of your points, and bring them into where I'm coming from as someone who prepares for these things. (We've got an Earthquake disaster drill coming up on the 13th that I think is going to go terrable.)

"The resources that LA needed from the feds was not forthcoming, regardless of the particulars of the local command structure. Lousiana requested, and was promised by FEMA, several hundred busses that did not arrive in time for the evac."

Did the IC request these things? See I've heard lots of things like this bantered about but I've never seen the proof of this. From the after action reports I've heard (mind you third hand) the calls for Federal assistance were not properly performed. Sure someone might have said they called, but if the local National Guard guys never got the orders they wouldn't be pulled out.

As for buses, do we really even want to go there? This is once again a failure of logistics to use the resources you were supposed to use, namely the hundreds of buses in town that were supposed to be used first. Those buses would and should have been used before any others would have been mobilized from outside the area. The logistics guy (a main branch of the ICS system) should have gone, "oh hey, we've got buses where are they and what are they doing?" If he didn't get them locally then he'd call out for them. If he didn't call (again until you can show me paper requests I can't say one way or the other) then even if FEMA did send buses (and they probably didn't I'll agree) they wouldn't have been allowed in area. Like the Red Cross.

As for the this: "but when push came to shove, that agency and its now fully intregated child FEMA were unable to provide much of even the small amount of support expected of them."

Again, I must go to what we're trained for on the ground. You do NOT expect or prepare for FEMA to show up until much later in the game. In fact from all reports I've seen the Federal response was well within norms. Am I saying that's a good thing? No, but I am saying that FEMA wasn't acting any worse than it always has, and that's the way things are now. Do I think they should be cheerleaded? No, but I don't think they "failed" as so many seem to think.

As for "doom predictions" we have those for everything. Every single disaster drill we come up with hundreds of dangerous issues and scenarios. We end up pointing out glaring troubles we have with current response methods. In the end we're SUPPOSED to learn from the drills like we do from specific emergencies. Ufortunetly this doesn't happen as often as it should.

For instance, in this upcoming Earthquake drill I fully believe my management will really screw things up and mess up the whole response. Because they'll put the wrong people in charge of the wrong things. In the After Action Review I'll let them know what I think they did wrong, but in the end I doubt they'll learn. Sure I can say "See I told you so" at the other end but it doesn't change anything.

What does change things are those who are in the field and on the ground. Management are notorious for ignoring "doom" predictions from "drills" because they seem like nit picking, pleas for more money, or what have you. Until we can drive it through the heads of those who are supposed to be "in charge" or those who end up in key positions that emergency response issues are important nothing will change. They HAD a plan, they had practiced that plan, but when it came down to it they through it out the window and ran around like chicken's with their heads cut off.

So to sum it up, can FEMA do better? Heck yeah, so can every response agency. Did FEMA perform poorly. Not really, it did what it was supposed to do in it's normal response range. We just focus on FEMA because they're the big huge butt that we can all see at the tail end of this. Unfortunetly FEMA is like most parts of big government, a huge money sink that doesn't keep good track of its money.

But you are blaming the Feds for what is supposed to be a locally run problem. If other states and cities can handle disasters, or know how to call in the Feds, why couldn't New Orleans or Lousisiana? Believe it or not, other places have faced disasters, and because they followed their plans, came thru very well. And they seemed to know that the Feds were not the answer.,or the punching bag, for problems that need to be addressed on the local level, before the disaster happens.

I'm just wondering if the proggies understand the phrase "natural disaster?"

If the New Madrid Seismic zone lets go, will they blame Bush?

If it makes them political hay, of course they will. And it is WHEN not if, just as it is on all fault lines.

Notice how none of the lefties are mentioning the 5th anniversary of 9/11, which is less then 2 weeks away, now?

They have been yammering about Katrina for at least a week and a half, and they probably will yammer for another 2 weeks.

But they will say little about 9/11

I'm always a little confused when I hear blame for this passed around. This project to shore up the levees started in 1965. It was supposed to be finished by 1975. Now, is it just me or did something happen for 25 years before Bush ever got elected President? Let's see, that's Ford, Carter, Reagan, 41, Clinton. And let's the forget Mike Foster and good old boy Louisiana politics.

You see, the problem is people see Operation Iraqi Freedom, how well the troops were supported, and they won't give Bush his due, but they will believe the people of New Orleans were entitled to that level of support. They just don't see that it took months to plan and get the logistics in place for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Trolls...
strange, have not heard you mention, that the NG, the CGuard, et al.did the most amazing job of rescue in the history of the USA...forgot that..thought so...how convenient for you!

Gozer,

You seem to know considerably more about this stuff than I. I gather that you do this for a living, is that right?

I also gather that many folks in the disaster response business are leary of the federal government's participation, and to me as a conservative, this makes perfect sense. The federal government is, as a rule, clumsy, slow, and inefficient. We KNOW this, and this is one of the very foundations of the conservative philosophy of decentralization. Local governments ought to be the prime mover in reponse to natural disaster, becuase they ought to be able to move more quickly and with greater precision than the feds (this is spoken in very general terms here, right?)

This is why I found it so very disingenuous for Bush to put on the show that he did in the days before Katrina hit. He did all the photo ops and press conferences he had time for, assuring us that the federal government had the situation completely under control, and I remember very clearly on saturday night that weekend thinking something along the lines of, "wow, he must really be pulling out the big guns, because this hurricane is reaaally going to mess stuff up".

Bush is a big-government kind of guy, and it was not surprising that he wanted the federal govt. to be the hero of the hour. What did rather surprise me is that he (and Chertoff and Brown, et al.) didn't actually manage to do the suff they said they would. The scale of the failure was really kind of goofy, given how showy they had been about it just the week before.

In december last year, Kathleen Blanco's office released a bajillion (or a hundred thousand, I forget which) documents that had accumulated just before, during, and after katrina hit. It was big news at the time, because the documents provided a better look at the details of the communication that went on between LA and the feds. The bush adminstration has been understandably reluctant to release any of its own documents, so the view from Blanco's side filled in a lot of holes.

The washington post did a short story on this a few days after the documents were released, which you can find at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301480.html.
You'll find a bunch of other news stories if you search, and you can actually access the documents themselves at several sites.

What comes through pretty loud and clear is that the governor's office spent a lot of time pressing the feds to make good on the resources they had promised. Whether or not proper protocols were followed I know not, someone like Gozer would be better able to judge. Like I said, it doesn't really matter that the federal government usually sucks at this kind of thing, and it doesn't really matter that most people already knew it at the time. What matters, now that Bush is making his big election-season tour of the south, is that he told Americans that he and his vaunted DHS/FEMA outfit had everything under control, and apparently there are a lot of suckers down there that bit, hard.

By the way, Gozer, I read through some of your posts in earlier threads, and you have a lot of very insightful things to say. Your level head is a service to this forum, I dare say.

Gozer, in re-reading you post, I think I understand better just how insufficient the local response was in Louisiana. This is definitely something that could be said a little louder in the press.

It is especially interesting to me that you emergency response folks do not plan to receive aid from FIMA until later in the response. And... this makes me wonder if the Bush administration maybe felt safe in making such sweeping promises before the hurricane, because perhaps they really didn't expect to be needed right away.

Anyway, I am not accusing Bush of being evil here, just a buffoon. I go bed now.

William Teach,

Yes, they will.

*Bows*

Thank you for the kind comments Nate. My family has a history of working in the Emergency services (both of my parents were fire fighters) and I'm currently a member of my company's emergency response team. Normally that wouldn't be much to talk about but because of our location and who I work for (NASA and JPL are buggers about emergency preparedness, go figure!) so our team is actually as close to a volunteer fire department as you can get without being able to fight fires. (We used to be able to. I joined to late for the fun! BOO! :( )

Anyways, what that means is we don't go on calls as often as normal departments so we end up doing a lot more training to make up the difference. As such I get a lot of this ICS stuff drilled into my head a lot. Along with the normal response stuff. Did you know all fire fighters keep a 24 hour bag with them? Because they are required to be ready to go on a call and be gone for 24 hours without relief! I was like "WHAT?!"

The crazy part is this is what they are used to, and I wasn't quite fully aware of when I signed up. (Not that I plan on getting out any time soon. :p ) In fact our location (On Fort Irwin military base) is prepared to spend 5 to 10 days without outside support in an emergency. While we won't be able to do our normal jobs after too long we would have supplies to get us by. A scary thought, but it is what is required/suggested. As you say the fed is a huge unweildly instrument, it takes a lot of time to get going which is why it is the last thing to call for.

. . and that the Feds can't come in with things liek the National guard until the state gives them PERMISSION.

Which was not given.

It may just be me, but I feel some of the people posting here are missing the point of the article linked and the post itself. The flooding of N.O. was more of a man made disaster waiting to happen as opposed to a natural disaster. Remember Katrina didn't "hit" N.O. It hit to the east. And since the west side of a hurricane is usually the weakest part of the storm, that left only about a cat 1, 2 at the most what hit N.O. A good 2 weeks of plain ol rain could have done exactly the same damage. It was faulty construction and upkeep of the levee system that flooded N.O. There by making it a man made disaster more than a "natural" disaster. So Morris is correct in that this was something that has been waiting to happen since the first levee was constructed (poorly constructed).

and to Xango Annie, you are correct also. In my opinion the Coast Guard by far outshined everyone in the area when it came to search and rescue. They were probably the first on the secene, and threw the "rules" out the window to what had to be done. Having pilots logging 16+ hrs flying time, when the law states they can only log 8.

If I had to put it into terms of good 'ol fashioned finger pointing, William Jefferson should get a good bit of blame. Being that he should have been hounding congress for the funding for these levees, however, we all know he had his mind elsewhere... but that's just nit-picking at this point.

What is really scarey is Nagin's assertion that the new/repaired levees are able to withstand another Katrina. Ofcourse, no mention is made of what will be done if the levees crack and start leaking again.

What Flooded New Orleans?

Water

When were the levees built?

By whom?

Who was responsible for their original construction? How was the responsibility assigned, among the locals and the Corps of Engineers?

Was all the money set aside for levee construction really spent on them?

Who was responsible for their maintenance?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I just know that G.W. Bush was not president when they were built, and I can't really fault him for not going around the country checking on every project that was built before he took office.

The state and local governments just have to take responsibility, like it or not, for their own turf.

I do remember that Bush had been asking---begging---Blanco to declare a mandatory evacuation, and she dithered. He asked her to request federal intervention, and she refused---couldn't risk ticking off those Dems by handing over control to BUSH, you know. But without state requesting of aid, the feds simply cannot command the state National Guard, or send in federal troops.

Nagin whined that he could not have used the school buses for evacuation because the drivers needed to be with their families. Of course, he never asked for volunteers. And although I am not a highly trained professional administrator, I think I might have figured out how to call the National Guard to request about 400 bus drivers.

A poster here last year, one from N.O., said that there were neighborhoods so dangerous that no one could enter---that is to say, no police, no fire department personnel, NO ONE---and Nagin knew this. Which is why he could not call for mandatory evacuation, and risk having this become public knowledge outside of New Orleans. We kind of caught on when uninformed rescue people unknowingly tried to go in to help people and were fired upon.

And where is the blame for the folks in Missisippi who refused to let refugees off the bridge?

No, the BDS contingent can never blame anyone but Bush for anything. And certainly a Dem stronghold like LA can't be expected to take any of the blame for the problems brought about by their own corruption. The sad thing is the number of footsoldiers around the country lined up to regurgitate their talking points, just because they are anti-Bush.