[From the diaries by susanhu. Just when we think we’ve heard it all …]

No, I’m not joking.

CBS is reporting that “Brownie” has been re-hired as a consultant to investigate his own complete and utter job failure at FEMA. Nice. Really really nice eh.

Has the Bush Admin (aka the Department of Dastardly Incompetence) no shame? Do they really believe that the American public will not see through any sham ‘report’ or ‘recommendations’ their Republican investigation submits?

Of course the answer is, they don’t care, he who controls the messenger controls the message and what not, but this is really just a joke in the most poor taste.

Via Raw Story

“Sept. 26, 2005 /6:44 p.m. (CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate it’s [sic] response following Hurricane Katrina.”

{View Video @ Raw Story}

RS also includes a link to the AP story which says he is only on board for the remaining two weeks of his contract, but I’m guessing CBS, having learned their lesson from TANG, will have some sort of confirmation of this consultant gig. I’ll keep a look out for developments.

Oh, and by the way, one of the first things he can investigate is this:

Eight months before the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, an internal Homeland Security Department review warned that the nation was woefully unprepared for a medical disaster and lacked a coherent plan for taking charge of mass casualties.

Government medical teams had difficulty coordinating and delivering help during 2004 hurricanes in Florida, said the report obtained by The Associated Press. The report also said there was inadequate planning for dealing with a surge of patients during a disaster like a biological or nuclear attack.

It called for creation of a uniformed medical reserve corps, including specialists, fashioned after the National Guard.

….

But the report’s author, St. Louis transplant surgeon Jeffrey Lowell, told AP he doesn’t believe DHS has implemented enough changes yet, and that the current system of volunteer disaster medical teams was “pretty much shot” when called upon to respond to a second disaster after Katrina.

Lowell also said he was startled when then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Mike Brown strongly rejected the ideas Lowell had proposed earlier this year. “He rejected the methodology, the message, the conclusion and the recommendations,” Lowell said. “He disagreed with every single everything.”

Brown, who resigned from FEMA earlier this month amid blistering criticism of his stewardship of the government’s response to Katrina, did not return repeated phone calls to his cell phone seeking comment.

Lowell said Brown didn’t want him to give the report to then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. But Lowell, who was hired by Ridge to conduct the review, said Ridge heartily welcomed its conclusions and recommendations.

Good place to start no?

Then perhaps he can investigate why on earth he had no idea there were people at the Convention Center when everyone else on the planet seemed to grasp this pertinent fact. And so on. And so on.

By the way, did I mention that if true, this is completely obscene? Thought so.

Update [2005-9-27 9:48:3 by spiderleaf]: ~ CNN is confirming he has been hired by FEMA as a consultant. FEMA is claiming he is only on contract during the “transisition”, whatever that means… should be an interesting hearing today.