In the early days following the chaos and devastation of Lousisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, I was disinclined to place any blame on President Bush or his administration, despite my utter contempt and loathing for the man and his underlings. My disgust and crisiticism were reserved for the local officials, the Governors who did not mobilize the National Guard BEFORE the storm hit, the local officials who did not anticipate that thousands would be unable to evacuate, and others whose incompetence and ineptitude are coming back to haunt them.

After Ted Koppel’s scathing interview with FEMA Director Mike Brown, however, I have come to see that the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina is just as incompetent and medacious as is it’s approach to the illusory War on Terror, the illegal War on Iraq, its loyalty to the energy industry, and it’s head-in-the-sand approach to Global Warming.

I do not come to these positions with the demogogic self-promotion of an opportunistic Jesse Jackson. Indeed, I am a recovering Republican. In 2000, George W. Bush was the first Republican for President for whom I did NOT vote, and I daily see reasons that justify my vote, first for Gore, and, then, for Kerry. Energy policy in the White House is written by former lobbyists for the oil industry. FDA drug approvals are decided by administrators who are former employees of the pharmaceutical companies which they now regulate. The President who once declared that man did not “evolute” now endorses teaching religious doctrine in Biology class. The Administration entered office in 2001, eight months before the 9/11 attacks, devising plans and strategy for a war in Iraq and only after 9/11 began to imply non-existent connections between the admittedly evil Saddam and the attackers. Paul Wolfowitz, then Assistant Secretary of Defense ADMITTED that WMD was the only excuse they could sell to the American people for going to war. Colin Powell was quoted by Newsweek as stating that the evidence of WMD he was asked by the President to present to the UN was, (his word), “bullshit.” A memo by the alleged felon and traitor Karl Rove, who is believed responsible for the leaking of Valery Plame’s identity to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for pointing out the errors in the Pesident’s speech declaring that Iraq had sought nuclear material from Niger, a memo by Rove in August 2002 discussed the political advantages to the Republican Party in the the 2002 and 2004 election campaigns. And, the President continues to lie to us as President Johnson did in 1968 about Vietnam, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that things are working out in Iraq, (tell that to the women of Iraq who will now be relagated to a status below farm animals under the rather strange and perverse form of Islamic law that is about to be imposed on them). I am not at all certain the parents of those brave and courageous American soldiers who have sacrificed their lives are proud that the result of their sacrifice is that a good portion of Iraq is about to become a suburb of Iran.

The current example of the Bush Administration’s incompetence is the evidence of Mike Brown, the FEMA Director whom the President declared, during one of his many “take-charge” photo-ops, was doing a “helluva” job.

The list of Mr. Brown’s mistakes are well documented by many news sources, with the notable exceptions of Fox News Channel and the Republican Washington Times, owned by the “Rev.” Sun-Myung Moon. What, however, should have been the tip-off that Brown had no business running the nation’s emergency response agency is that he was a crony of Joe Allbaugh, an Oklahoman who ran President Bush’s 2000 campaign. Brown was a friend of Allbaugh when he, Brown, was a minor city official in a small suburb of Oklahoma City. That seems to have been the his principal qualification for talking over the emergency operations of the entire United States of America, a minor official in a suburb of Oklahoma City; oh, and friendship with the President’s campaign manager.

Welcome to America in the 21st Century.