Hurricane Katrina: One Year and What’s Been Done
August 31st, 2006
So now that the mass media and the Bush administration are celebrating the so-called relief efforts that have trickled into the Katrina-affected areas of the U.S., let’s look at what is really going on over there. Common Dreams has a very thorough study of the situation as it stands. As we know, former FEMA head Michael Brown is singing like a bird now that he’s been abandoned by Bush and it’s too bad the media isn’t picking up on his admission of lying to protect the President. This partial transcript is great:
O’DONNELL: You have recently given an interview to Playboy Magazine, in which you admitted that it was a mistake for you to play along with the White House message during Katrina and you said that that message was a lie. What was the lie?
BROWN: The lie was that we were working as a team and that everything was working smoothly. And how we could go out, and I beat myself up almost daily for allowing this to have happened, to sit there and go on television and talk about how things are working well, when you know they are not behind the scenes, is just wrong.
O’DONNELL: So let me get this clear. Someone in the White House was telling you to lie?
BROWN: Well, yes. They give you the talking points. Whenever you go out to do any interviews they always have the talking points. Here’s what the message for today is and here’s how we are going to spin everything. That’s just the way Washington, D.C. works and that’s just wrong.
O’DONNELL: Do you work for the White House or do you work for the American people?
BROWN: Exactly I worked for the American people.
O’DONNELL: Then why did you lie? If you say that they told you to lie, why did you carry that out?
BROWN: Norah, that’s exactly why I think that’s the biggest mistake that I made, was not leveling with the American people and saying, you know what, this is a catastrophic event and it’s not working at the state, local or the federal level.
Wow. Crooks and Liars has some analysis of the interview. So, back to the state of the nation one year after Hurricane Katrina. Many people know things are not okay and thankfully let others hear it. The very eloquent and hard-hitting Greg Palast lets us know about a LinkTV video marking the anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
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