Since I’ve been hammering the president over Katrina, it behooves me to say what I think he’s not responsible for. He’s not responsible for hurricanes. He’s not responsible for short-changing Louisiana on federal funds for relevant construction. He’s been pouring money into Louisiana for years now. He’s not responsible for the inadequate evacuation plans of the mayor and the stonewalling of the governor in allowing federal troops to pour in on time. He is responsible for not having a national plan in place that works to cope with disasters that wipe out the capacities of first-responders. After 9/11, that’s inexcusable. This is the scenario that Dick Cheney envisaged minutes after he heard about 9/11: that terrorists could attack a major U.S. city with much more devastating weaponry. That’s why we went into Iraq. Four years later, no real plan is in place. We are still on our own. After all that money poured into homeland defense, we still have no capacity to act swiftly to save lives after a major attack. This is not only a betrayal of his campaign promises; it’s a betrayal of war leadership; and, much worse, it’s an invitation to our enemies to attack. That’s why I endorsed his opponent last November: demonstrated incompetence. Iran, unsurprisingly, has noticed. Money quote:
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been following closely the way the United States government has been handling Hurricane Katrina, and drawing strategic conclusions from it.
In remarks that appeared on Ansar-e Hezbollah website on Sunday, a top official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the devastating hurricane had exposed America’s vulnerabilities.
“The mismanagement and the mishandling of the acute psychological problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina clearly showed that others can, at any given time, create a devastated war-zone in any part of the U.S.”, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the official spokesman of the IRGC, said.
“If the U.S. attacks Iran, each of America’s states will face a crisis the size of Katrina”, he said, referring to the massive hurricane which hit the southern coast of the United States. “The smallest mistake by America in this regard will result in every single state in that country turning into a disaster zone”.
“How could the White House, which is impotent in the face of a storm and a natural disaster, enter a military conflict with the powerful Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly with the precious experience that we gained in the eight-year war with Iraq?” he said.
Jazayeri said the hurricane havoc showed that “contrary to public perception, the strength of America’s leadership is like a balloon, which can easily burst”.
The Revolutionary Guards spokesman said the U.S. administration’s inability to end the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan showed the “weakness of America’s defence and state departments, as well as its intelligence and security apparatus”.
With his incompetent handling of the war in Iraq ande his bungling of the Katrina aftermath, this president has emboldened our enemies, eviscerated fear of the U.S., and made us more vulnerable if terror strikes.
The Dish 