Stalin ponders accountability

Update for all the Bush-lovers out there: some Katrina timelines you may want to peruse are here, here, and here.

As I sit here in my nice, dry, non-Cholera-infested apartment, I'm pondering who should be held accountable for this disaster, and how. First, let's hear from an acknowledged right-wing nutjob, Christopher Hitchens:

It's one of the two or three best-known risks to the United States, is that the levees protecting New Orleans could break. I know that and I live in Washington. It's also, I'm afraid to say, the only thing the President has said about this that anyone can remember. I mean, he didn't get there - it isn't that they didn't fly to the city beforehand, which he could easily have done on that kind of warning, and say, "Look, I'm the President of the United States, we can't lose or even risk losing one of our great historic cities. I have come to make sure that all the state and city officials have got everything they could possibly want in advance." For example, a few piles of bottled water wouldn't have come amiss if there's going to be suddenly too much water but none of it drinkable. Elementary things like that. He didn't do that. Then he did a fly-by from his holiday retreat, and then he got there too late and then he said something completely idiotic. So I really can't see there is any forgiveness for that. And remember also, that he did interrupt his holiday not very long ago to pay attention to something that was none of his business at all as President. Namely, the alleged living condition of an actually dead woman named Terri Schiavo.

That just shows you how truly, completely insane and unpatriotic the Bush apologists are. I mean, Hitchens is universally acknowledged as an alcoholic lunatic - and he gets it?

But there is a clear excuse for those hunting for one. The White House, completely unperturbed by the approach of Katrina - read the timeline at ThinkProgress here - has gone into full offensive/spin/lie mode, as has been laid out, among others, by the Washington Post, here, here, here, here, and here.

So while I do understand where the wingnuts are coming from, doing what they have been trained to do, and from the mold of which they will never emerge without electroshock therapy, the rest of us need to scream from the rooftops that thousands of Americans are dead that did not need to die, and that they have been killed by the studious neglect that always characterizes the Bush junta when it is confronted with disaster.

I have seen several calls for impeachment, but as sweet as that thought is, it is presently impractical. True payback for this - unless we go down the same road slouched by the traitors that impeached President Clinton - must and will come at the ballot box. Meanwhile, we will comfort the survivors, rebuild New Orleans, and finally address the root cause of the botched evacuation: the miserable poverty in which so many of our fellow Americans live.

Meanwhile, the White House will continue to spin and lie, and some unfortunate souls will believe the hype - because they always do.