White House Admits "Fallability"

From The Editors:

WASHNGTON (Reuters) - In a rare admission of fallibilty from an administration reluctant to admit error, the White House today publicly admitted that its response to hurricane Katrina was "not timely", and promised a more "pro-active" response to future crises...

McClellan explained how lack of advance planning caused delays in the administration’s first response to the hurricane. "In those first hours, critical time was lost because we weren’t prepared to blame state and local officials. Indeed, precious minutes were wasted trying to find out who was mayor of New Orleans, information that should have been made available as soon as Katrina formed. It’s not like this wasn’t predicted. With these early missteps we lost the initiative, and we never fully recovered."

McClellan revealed that the White House would be teaming with NSA scientists to create a massive computer database of lesser officials around the country who could be blamed in the event of an emergency. From governors and mayors on down to local police chiefs and EMTs, the Super-Computing Accountability Preventition Engine and Government Official Absolving Tool, or SCAPEGOAT, would create a cross-referenced list of patsies nanoseconds after detecting bad press. This would be the first step of a massive government reorganization, which would see FEMA dissolved, and it, along with the rest of the government, folded into a new department called FEMMA, the Federal Emergency Media Management Agency, to be headed by Karl Rove. FEMMA would employ a full-time staff of thousands of firemen, soldiers, fighter pilots, astronauts, and other heroic figures for the President to pose with in case of emergency, as well as a state-of-the-art Hollywood soundstage where the President could comfort stunt-victims in an endless array of convincing and topical disaster milieux. This would enable the President to perform all his critical photo-op duties without having to risk the unflattering moments that often plague real scenes of human suffering.

Questioned about the potential disruption of services that would accompany such a wholescale restructuring of the government, McClellan claimed that these changes were simply "clarifications of existing conditions", and that most people who had worked in the Bush White House would notice no change in their responsibilities. As for the costs, McClellan agreed that they would be substantial, but necessary.

"America is a great nation,” he said. “And a great nation deserves great excuses."