Is This Thing On?

"Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."

Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security - (Saturday 9/3/05 newsbriefing)


"Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

Aaron Broussard
president, Jefferson Parish, LA


At a school in Mississippi, it was First Lady Laura Bush defending the government’s response to Katrina. "I think we’ve seen a lot of the same footage over and over that isn’t necessarily representative of what really happened in both—in a lot of ways,” she said. “Overall, it was a very good response.”



"I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005


"I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005


"Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, blaming media coverage for his failings, "Meet the Press," Sept. 4, 2005


"We just learned of the convention center – we being the federal government – today."

FEMA Director Michael Brown, to ABC's Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005, to which Koppel responded " Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today."


The Washington Post's Dana Milbank previews the challenges facing newly minted State Department official Karen Hughes. Regarding international coverage of the Administration's handling of the hurricane, Milbank says, Hughes asserted that the problem "was not a failed relief effort but a foreign press that did not appreciate the federal government's good work."


"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."

FEMA Director Michael Brown, arguing that the victims bear some responsibility, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005 (Source)


"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005


"It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Aug. 31, 2005


"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them."

Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005