Surviving our leadership

Don't worry folks. FEMA is on the job. The beleaguered band of incompetents who couldn't find New Orleans a week ago has found something it's good at doing.

News management. The powers that be have decided that news photographers, both print and television, can't take or distribute photos of anything suggesting a dead body.

Keep in mind, in our country's muddied history the only other times a "black out" of dead bodies in the media has resulted in catastrophic results. From the Civil War to Vietnam, and most recently the Iraq War, government has tried to hide the reality of war from its citizens.

But this isn't war. This natural disaster was a colossal failure on the part of our nation to care for its citizens. Maybe that's what FEMA is hiding.

Nothing could have been done to stop Hurricane Katrina. A lot could have been done to prepare for it. And, even more could have been done to avoid the needless deaths that occurred after the storm.

At a press briefing Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended President George W. Bush and his staff, saying he did not want to "engage in the blame game." "We appreciate the great effort that all of those at FEMA, including the head of FEMA, are doing to help the people in the region," McClellan said.

FEMA Director Michael Brown has a lot of explaining to do. Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff has a lot of explaining to do. President Bush has a lot of explaining to do.

If not to Americans, if not to the parents who held their young children as they died of dehydration, if not to the families who lost loved ones needlessly, then certainly to their God.