"Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare," the draft says. "At every level — individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental — we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw."
"It remains difficult to understand how government could respond so ineffectively to a disaster that was anticipated for years, and for which specific dire warnings had been issued for days," the report says. "This crisis was not only predictable, it was predicted."
"The president is less interested in yesterday and more interested with today and tomorrow," Mr. Abney said, "so that we can be better prepared for next time."
The White House declined to provide copies of e-mail messages or other correspondence by senior advisers to the president, limiting the House investigators' ability to understand fully the White House's role in the response, the report says. But with the information the committee collected, it says, it is clear that the president's office is also to blame.
The response to Hurricane Katrina, the report says, ultimately was a failure of leaders to take action.
"If 9/11 was a failure of imagination," it says, "then Katrina was a failure of initiative."
You may find it hard to believe but the committee was made up only of Republicans.
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