Looking into the future the Pelican feeding its young from a self-induced wound in its own breast (as depicted, mysteriously, on the state flag of Louisiana) is accepted as an appropriate symbol of both self-sacrifice and rebirth. Through his selfless efforts, man is raised from the slavery of ignorance to the condition of freedom conferred by wisdom. Given the current state of affairs in Louisiana, one hopes that the understanding of the Pelican as a symbol shall point the way towards a new consciousness of ourselves as a whole, and lead us to face our futures with strength, grace, wisdom and faith, to learn from our mistakes and carry our successes and zest for living to future generations.

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Iraq & Katrina: The Bookend Failures of the Bush Presidency

As the fallout from Katrina continues this week, the bloody news from Iraq reminds us that the Bush administration has two major disasters on its hands. Here are four posts I did on the ongoing catastrophes. For the latest headlines and blogs, keep logging on to huffingtonpost.com.

Katrina Relief: It's Iraq Deja vu All Over Again

Posted September 16, 2005

Reacting to all the pricey promises the president made in his big Katrina speech, a senior House Republican official told the New York Times , "We are not sure he knows what he is getting into."

If that's true, Bush must have the worst memory since Guy Pearce in "Memento" because he's definitely been down this road before.

The coming attractions for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast play like a shot-by-shot remake of the mother of all disaster features, the reconstruction of Iraq.

Let's start with the rhetoric. "We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes," the president pledged on Thursday. "We will do whatever it takes... we will stay there until the job is done," the president said of Iraq in November 2003. It wouldn't be a "Terminator" movie without "I'll be back," and it wouldn't be a massive mega-billion dollar Bush initiative without a vow to stay the course.

This rhetorical comparison extends to what the president didn't say -- namely, anything about the need for shared sacrifice. He didn't call for it after 9/11, he didn't call for it when we embarked on the war in Iraq, and he didn't call for it as we are embarking on the rebuilding of New Orleans. The closest he came was challenging "scout troops" to "get in touch with their counterparts" in the disaster area and "learn what they can do to help." Wonder if that was part of the Heritage Foundation's post-Katrina policy manifesto: Merit badges for corpse recovery and helping displaced evacuees across the street!

Indeed, responding to the devastation caused by Katrina, Treasury Secretary John Snow claimed: "Making the [Bush] tax cuts permanent would be a real plus in a situation like this." Sure, why ask for some sacrifice from the richest Americans when we have scout troops doing their part?

The feeling that the Katrina relief effort is going to be Iraq all over again is unavoidable when you look at the list of the companies already being awarded clean up and reconstruction contracts. It's that old gang from Baghdad: Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor, and the Shaw Group (which has a tasteful notice on its website saying "Hurricane Recovery Projects -- Apply Here!"). Together again. A veritable moveable feast of crony capitalism.

Even the Wall Street Journal is getting an uneasy sense of deja vu, pointing out that "the Bush administration is importing many of the contract practices blamed for spending abuses in Iraq," including contracts awarded without competitive bidding, and cost-plus provisions "that guarantee contractors a certain profit regardless of how much they spend." So what's the thinking on this one, Mr. President -- 'If at first you don't succeed...'?

And what about financial oversight of the tens of billions that will be doled out to these corporate chums of the administration? After consistently stonewalling investigations into the corruption that has plagued U.S. efforts in Iraq, the president vowed to have "a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures" related to Katrina. But such promises seem laughable when you remember what happened to Bunny Greenhouse. After blowing the whistle on Halliburton's corrupt Iraq war contracts, the Army Corps of Engineers auditor was demoted. That should really motivate the Katrina contract inspection team.

Another very troubling similarity between the Katrina plan and the Iraq debacle is the failure of Democratic leaders to address the core issues raised by the president's proposals. Mirroring the spineless bandwagon hopping that gave the president a flashing green light on Iraq, Harry Reid responded to Bush's speech by saying, "I think we have to understand that we have a devastation that has to be taken care of. And I'm not finding where we can cut yet."

Really? How about Iraq? We're spending $5 billion a month there. And what about demanding the rollback of the Bush tax cuts? Even a partial rollback would produce about $180 billion in revenue, right around what the Katrina relief effort is estimated to cost. And how about taking a carving knife to the huge slabs of pork that continue to be piled onto legislation like the new transportation bill, which included 6,371 pet projects inserted by members from both parties, at a cost of more than $24 billion. And that's just one bill! But the Senate Minority Leader can't find where to cut yet?

Iraq is an utter catastrophe. The only good that can come from it will be as an object lesson in what not to do with Katrina. But, so far, it's a lesson both the president and the loyal opposition seem unwilling to learn.

As the philosopher said: It's deja vu all over again.

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Karl Rove's Big Easy

Posted September 15, 2005

Creating an independent, bipartisan commission to look into what went so horribly wrong with the response to Katrina is not only an idea supported by an overwhelming majority of the American people -- including 64% of Republicans -- it's also, unarguably, the right thing to do.

After all, we're not talking about a witch hunt to ferret out which public officials should be pilloried in the public square (although surely more than a few members of the administration deserve a good thrashing -- uh, I mean Medal of Freedom) but a chance to make sure that the same mistakes aren't made when the dreaded next terrorist attack hits us. If we look at Katrina as a very wet dry run for our response to Hurricane Osama, an independent commission should have been empanelled the second the bodies started piling up in New Orleans.

And it's not like this kind of fast-track fact-gathering is without precedent. The first of nine investigations into the failures that led to Pearl Harbor convened 11 days after that attack. And LBJ created the Warren Commission seven days after President Kennedy was assassinated.

But a full, public, and unbiased accounting is the last thing the White House and its Congressional allies want. Hence Wednesday's straight party-line vote. Not surprisingly, the GOP prefers the fox guarding the henhouse approach of having a Republican-controlled Congressional panel investigate Katrina.

Of course, we've seen this foot-dragging, stonewalling, anything-to-avoid-looking-in-the-mirror tactic before. It took 14 months -- and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the 9/11 families -- before Bush finally relented and the 9/11 Commission was created. Is that kind of public shaming what it's going to take to get to the truth about Katrina? If so, let's not wait 14 months to have the families of Katrina's victims gather outside the White House demanding answers.

There is too much at stake to let Bush and the GOP Congress play politics with our lives.

And speaking of playing politics, I love how the news that Karl Rove has been placed in charge of the reconstruction effort was buried in the ninth paragraph of a twelve-paragraph New York Times story on Bush's big speech.

This assignment proves that despite the president's lofty rhetoric about "building a better New Orleans," his main concern is stanching his political bleeding. Let's be honest, when it comes to large-scale efforts like this, Ol' Turd Blossom isn't exactly Gen. George Marshall, who, before devising the Marshall Plan, had, among other things, been responsible for deploying over eight million soldiers in WW II.

Rove's genius (aside from a Mensa-level mastery of dirty trickery) is for using imagery, spin, and atmospherics to turn political liabilities into political opportunities.

So here is the White House's Katrina Plan in a nutshell: block any independent examination of its failings, put the Einstein of damage control in charge of reconstructing New Orleans, keep the dead bodies out of sight, try to get away with general platitudes and palliatives, offer watered-down acceptances of "responsibility" while trying to pin everything you can on local yokels and fall guys like Brownie, and let Bush's corporate cronies get fat on hefty no-bid reconstruction contracts.

So get ready for the New New Orleans -- Karl Rove's Big Easy -- featuring the Halliburton French Quarter, the ExxonMobil River (formerly the Mississippi), Lake MBNA (formerly Pontchartrain), and Eli Lilly music (formerly jazz).

With deals like that shimmering on the horizon, it's no wonder the president's pals in Congress are doing everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into House Democrats' efforts to investigate the Plamegate scandal, and the Boy Genius' involvement in it -- shooting down a pair of bills that would have required Alberto Gonzales and the Justice Department, and Condi Rice and the State Department to turn over all documents and information pertaining to the outing of Valerie Plame.

God forbid! Mustn't allow anything to get in the way of Reconstruction Karl's efforts to rebuild the president's poll numbers, eh?

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Another Victim of Katrina: Media Coverage of Iraq

Posted September 13, 2005

The monomaniacs in the media are at it again, focusing all their attention on a single story to the exclusion of all others.

At least this time the story the galloping herd has focused on is a mega-disaster and not Michael Jackson or Natalee Holloway or the Brad-Jen-Angelina triangle. But as monumental a story as Katrina is, why aren't the American media capable of covering two disasters at the same time?

I'm talking, of course, about the other disaster facing our country, Iraq. You remember Iraq, don't you? I wouldn't blame you if it's slipped your mind, because it has certainly fallen off the media radar screen since Katrina came ashore -- devastating the Gulf Coast and blowing the devastation in the Persian Gulf off the front pages.

But that's definitely where it belongs. Especially given how much there is on the Iraq beat for the media to be covering.

For starters, there were the laughable statements on Iraq the president offered up during his latest tour of the battered Gulf Coast (an Iraq-Katrina press conference twofer that should have made things so easy for the media).

"We've got plenty of troops to do both," said the president when asked about a Katrina/Iraq connection. "It is preposterous to claim that the engagement in Iraq meant there wasn't [sic] enough troops here, just pure and simple."

In fact, what is preposterous is this latest presidential lie. C'mon, Mr. President, there clearly weren't enough troops in Louisiana and Mississippi to keep order after the storm -- just like there weren't enough troops in Iraq to keep order after the fall of Saddam. And our troops over there are still stretched to the breaking point. Things are so bad, the Pentagon has even refused to grant emergency 15-day leaves to hundreds of Mississippi National Guardsmen in Iraq who lost their homes to Katrina -- unable to spare the manpower.

Following the president's lead -- and indeed upping the misrepresentation ante quite a bit -- was Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, who gave a press conference Monday equating our mission in Iraq to our mission in WW II and claiming that Iraq presents the same kind of threat that the Soviet Union did.

Then there is the disturbing spectacle of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani being forced to make like an American pol and ask for a "do over" after the White House slapped him down for telling the Washington Post that the U.S. could start pulling out some troops immediately, and withdraw at least 40,000 to 50,000 by the end of the year. By Tuesday's joint White House press conference with President Bush, Talabani was totally on message, spouting Bush's familiar talking points about how setting a timetable for withdrawal would only "help the terrorists" and give them "a signal they can defeat us." (Right now, somewhere in Iraq, a future Talabani opponent is surely scouring eBay, looking for some of those oversized prop flip-flops that were such a hit at the 2004 GOP convention.)

Talabani also said Iraqi troops will only take control of Iraq with the "complete agreement of America." Doesn't having to ask the U.S. permission to take control of your own country kinda undermine the idea that this is anything other than an occupation? Colonies ask for permission; independent democracies don't.

And, oh yeah, the war itself continues to be a bloody debacle. Nineteen U.S. soldiers have died since Katrina made landfall on August 29 -- and the bodies of dead Iraqis continue to pile up all across the country. A Tuesday AP recap gave a sense of the hell enveloping Iraq, with mortar rounds hitting the Green Zone in Baghdad, a roadside bomb killing four in Basra, two clerics shot and killed in Baqouba, a minivan blowing up in Hilla, a former judge murdered in Sadr City, reports of a bounty being offered for the assassination of key Iraqi officials, including $100,000 for whoever might kill Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. And on and on it goes. Disastrous -- and underreported.

Equally under-reported, and perhaps even more troubling, is the woeful state of the reconstruction effort. Twenty-eight months after Bush prematurely announced "Mission Accomplished," and despite the $24 billion in taxpayer money earmarked for reconstruction, the Iraqi people are still facing massive energy shortages, inadequate water and sewage systems, mile-long lines for gas, and a surge in dehydration among children and the elderly. Plus, sky-high unemployment and infant mortality rates. As Don Sherwood, a House Republican, put it: "It seems almost incomprehensible to me that we haven't been able to do better."

For all these reasons, Iraq must remain a front-page story. Even when other big stories arise. The media will just have to join the 21st century and learn how to multitask -- and cover two disasters at the same time.

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The GOP Finds the Silver Lining in Death and Destruction

Posted September 12, 2005

The GOP message machine has now moved into the latest stage of its Katrina response: gleeful opportunism.

First there was denial. The lowlights of this stage included Bush strumming his guitar, Condi taking in "Spamalot," and Cheney shopping for luxury digs -- all while New Orleans flooded.

This was followed by the clueless stage, which will be best remembered by the president telling Michael Brown, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of job!", his mothersaying of Katrina's victims, "This is working very well for them," Tom DeLay asking young evacuees in the Astrodome, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?", and the president vowing to rebuild Trent Lott's house: "I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

Next came head-ducking. Repeat after me: "This is not a time for finger pointing," "We are not going to play the blame game."

But after staggering through those stages, Republicans have regained their footing and are now hard at work finding the silver lining within all the death and destruction -- i.e. a chance to trot out their pet shibboleths and push for their pet projects.

"The question is," said Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, commenting on the now-abandoned plan to issue $2,000 debit cards to Katrina victims, "how do you separate the needy from those who just want a $2,000 handout?" Actually, Governor, the question is, among hundreds of thousands of evacuees are there any who are not really "needy" -- but somehow managed to have their lives destroyed so they could score a $2,000 handout?

Then there was Fox News' Tony Snow who crowed: "This would be a marvelous time to push in a serious way for school choice, dramatic regulatory reform...even more thoroughgoing tort reform, privatization of everything from the Department of Commerce to many FEMA duties, and so on."

David Sirota laid out a few of the top opportunities the GOP sees arising from Katrina, including the suspension of the 74-year-old Davis-Bacon Act requiring federal contractors to pay workers "prevailing wages," the chance to offer more giveaways (and fewer regulations) to oil companies, and -- proving that no issue is too tangential to link to Katrina -- the chance to try and get the president's derailed attempt to privatize Social Security back on track.

But wait, there's more. Pete Domenici is looking to ease environmental requirements on oil refineries, and George Allen wants to permanently repeal parts of the clean air act.

Two weeks in, Katrina has turned into an-all-you-can-eat right-wing-policy buffet.

And, as is so often the case with these tireless champions of crony capitalism, the main course at this opportunistic smorgasbord is "privatization." And the target du jour is FEMA. The subtext is that the Katrina debacle somehow proves that disaster relief is no business for the government and should be turned over to the Halliburtons of the world (after all, they've done such a great job supplying our troops and reconstructing Iraq, right?).

Of course, FEMA's Katrina failures have far less to do with some inherent big government bugaboos than with the way Bush and the partisan hacks he installed there turned a successful, widely-praised cabinet level agency (one that then-Gov. George Bush took time to praise in a debate with Al Gore in 2000) into a denuded and incompetently managed afterthought.

In truth, the piecemeal privatization of FEMA started soon after Bush took office -- and is one of the reasons it has stumbled so badly in Louisiana and Mississippi. Ezra Klein offered chapter and verse on this and on the chutzpah of the GOP attempt to use the Katrina fiasco to privatize FEMA: "The car broke because Bush slashed the tires and now his allies are trying to convince us that the real problem lies with the whole 'car' concept."

David Brooks spent his last Sunday column attempting to make this very case. Let me distill its essence for you: Government sucks! According to Brooks, "the Army Corps of Engineers had plenty of money" -- so the problem wasn't that Bush had slashed funding to fortify the levees, the problem was government. And according to Brooks, "there were ample troops nearby to maintain order" -- so the problem wasn't that nearly 40% of Louisiana and Mississippi's National Guard is deployed in Iraq, the problem was government. And the problem certainly wasn't that Bush had filled five of the eight top slots at FEMA with incompetent political cronies... the problem was (all together now!) government.

In fact, dear David, the fault lies not in the Platonic idea of government but in the crummy reality of our leaders.

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