What was that title again, Dr. Rice?

Oh, wait. It's 2006, so the newest administration screwup is being alerted about Katrine well in advance.

Here we go:

The NISAC analysis accurately predicted the collapse of floodwalls along New Orleans's Lake Pontchartrain shoreline, an event that the report described as "the greatest concern." The breach of two canal floodwalls near the lake was the key failure that left much of central New Orleans underwater and accounted for the bulk of Louisiana's 1,100 Katrina-related deaths.

The documents shed new light on the extent on the administration's foreknowledge about Katrina's potential for unleashing epic destruction on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

It seems like every time we have a major problem on our hands we discover:

a) the administration had no idea how to handle it b) some government agency briefed the administration a few days beforehand describing the exact scenario c) some government agengy wargamed the particular scenario a few months/years in advance

The point isn't, of course, that the administration deliberately didn't help. Instead, we should focus on the fact that this administration is unable to perform its job for the American people. The entire purpose of a bureaucracy is to generate ideas and plans for when problems arise. To ignore their solutions is idiocy. What could happen next? Let's say that, god forbid, a dirty bomb goes off in DC tomorrow. What would result?

1. the administration would claim it couldn't have predicted the bomb
2. DoE would say that, three months earlier, it had warned the administration that a theft of radioactive materials had taken place at a facility in Kentucky
3. DHS would botch the initial response, and then later discover that FEMA had actually generated a full plan for a dirty-bomb scenario, which was promptly ignored.

Democrats not only need to fight against corruption in government, they also need to restore America's faith in its government. Right now the Bushies are doing everything they can to undermine that faith. Let's not let them get away with it.