"I take responsibility"

[kandrathe]

...the blame for FEMA's craptacular performance...
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I had to reply, in that you are reacting to the uninformed spew of the popular media.

FEMA has a role in prepositioning aid and preparing an organized response to a disaster, but it defers action to fill in for a local, or State failure or inadequacy. Obviously, each municipality, and the State of Louisiana entirely failed to prepare for a disaster on this magnitude. Kudos though, that State and local authorities eventually recognized the scale of the storm and implemented (however poorly) a full evacuation of parts of New Orleans.

I understood it that he was accepting responsibility for appointing a political crony to a post that required someone adept in planning for and managing a disaster response, or for not pre-positioning National Guard troops which required that the Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana to would have requested Federal military aid prior to Thursday morning. I think as the post mortem unfolds you will find culpability for the poor response more at the State and local levels, and failure at the Federal(FEMA) levels in the assumption that the localities had adequate plans AND the means to implement them. Much of this failure was in preparing for a post-distaster response, and the failure lies with the municipalities affected, the State of Louisiana, and FEMA. I notice we are not talking much about Mississippi, who was hit harder by the storm. Why?