Did the Bush team ignore their own National Response Plan?

It sure looks like it. Now, we can't be too harsh because they created a plan to meet emergency situations just like Katrina way back in, uh December 2004. I mean, who would really expect them to follow their own response plan? So, who's going to ask Bush & Chertoff about this one?

According to the PREFACE, President Bush, "directed the development of a new National Response Plan (NRP) to align Federal coordination structures, capabilities, and resources into a unified, all discipline, and all-hazards approach to domestic incident management. . . .The end result is vastly improved coordination among Federal, State, local, and tribal organizations to help save lives and protect America's communities by increasing the speed, effectiveness, and efficiency of incident management."

Josh Marshall also has full coverage of the lie-meisters at work who seem to be pushing the media to incorrectly report that Governor Blanco of Louisiana did not declare a state of emergency.

SHE DID, on August 26.The lies are coming as quickly as they can throw them right now.

Cross-posted from AmericaBlog.

Update: Andrew Sullivan has more and Larry Johnson talks Bush criminal negligence.

The provocative title is intentional. Why did the Bush Administration fail to act according to the National Response Plan they created in December of 2004 to deal with an incident like Katrina?

What do you do when the words on the paper don't match the action in the field? People are dying today in New Orleans because of the failure to provide immediate aid are dead in part because of the negligence of Michael Chertoff. That is a harsh judgment, but if you will take time to read the National Response Plan that was signed into effect in December of 2004 there is no other reasonable conclusion.

The current effort by the Bush Administration to blame the victims in Louisiana and Mississippi is bad enough, but they are in big trouble once Americans take the time to understand that they the Administration ignored it's own plan for dealing with a threat like Katrina. Why did they fail to implement the plan until it was too late to save lives along the Gulf Coast?

Don't take my word for it, read the plan yourself. You can download it at http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf


And by the way Fire Brown Now!!!