Will A Katrina Probe Turn Into A Smear Campaign?

Captain's Quarters ^ | September 06, 2005 | Captain Ed

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The Senate Homeland Security Committee announced earlier today that they would start an investigation into the comprehensive response to Hurricane Katrina, how flood aid got delivered, and why crucial hours and days passed seemingly without any significant efforts made to reach pockets of survivors in New Orleans. If handled properly, such an investigation can help clear the air and lower the venom surrounding the debate over the response and the responsibility for its shortfalls. It also holds a clear possibility to allow malicious actors to subvert it into an election-year vehicle to score partisan cheap shots:

The Republican senator leading a Senate investigation into the government's response to Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it was "woefully inadequate" and it had raised doubts about the U.S. ability to cope with a terrorist attack.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, spoke as lawmakers prepared to provide a second round of emergency money to cope with the devastation on the Gulf coast expected to total around $40 billion.

Collins said her Senate Homeland Security Committee would begin its investigation this week into the relief efforts.

"If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning and that was intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible?" she told reporters.

Collins and the panel's top Democrat, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, promised a bipartisan, wide-ranging review, which was requested by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Hugh Hewitt, for one, bets on the cheap shots:

[BigSkyFreeper]

I think it will either be a smear campaign, a complete whitewash, or a combination of the two.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

I think you are right, and same thing will happen with the Able Danger scandal.

[PeteB570]

Anything that does not start with the mayor, his political appointees, the school board (minutes of June 5th meeting), the police department then moving to Gov. Blanco before getting to President Bush and the federal level will be a whitewash.