from the Nation:
BLOG | Posted 02/14/2007 @ 4:13pm
No Katrina Hearings? Gotcha, Joe
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Senator Joseph Lieberman ?, Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, recently did a one-eighty and said that he will not hold investigations into the disastrous Bush administration (non-)response to Hurricane Katrina. He He said, "We don't want to play ‘gotcha' anymore" and that "looking back… would be a waste of Congress' time."
In an attempt to explain the inexplicable Lieberman's spokeswoman Leslie Philips offered this somewhat bizarre statement: "The senator believes a more productive use of his time and that of his staff is to… ensure that a response to a future catastrophe is better."
Huh? Isn't that the whole point of examining the mistakes that were made and why they occurred? To make sure that we get it right the next time?
In fact, Phillips' statement was reminiscent of something Lieberman wrote in May, 2006 in support of the very investigations he is now dismissing: "Only through a thorough and comprehensive investigation of what went wrong
we be assured that the government will know what steps are necessary to get it right the next time." Lieberman also decried "a conscious strategy of slow-walking our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation's natural progression to where it leads." He accused the White House of ordering witnesses not to respond to questions, and the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security of failing to cooperate as well. ......(more)
The rest of the piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=166256