Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Cybersecurity Not So Secure?
freaktheclown writes "According to CNet, 'government auditors have been saying that Homeland Security has failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be 'unprepared' for emergencies.'" The article discusses FEMA's handling of relief efforts for hurricane Katrina and how a very similar situation exists with electronic security measures in the U.S. In addition to a conjecture the department of cybersecurity has been "plagued by a series of damning reports, accusations of bureaucratic bungling, and a rapid exodus of senior staff that's worrying experts and industry groups."
... are given jobs because of their political affiliations.
Yes, unqualified people performing serious jobs leads to nothing but problems.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Cybersecurity not so secure?
That's like jumbo shrimp!
Really though, who qualifies? People that work for Symantec, McAfee and the likes? Cyber security really starts at each individual user, imo. The virus can't spread if it has nowhere to spread to. I know thats not directly related to the article, but is a clutch 'factor' in Security on the web. Can't DOS something if you have no hosts.
I keep all my usernames/passwords on a Geocities hosted site.
You don't say! What makes you draw such startling conclusions? You're really risking your career going out on such limbs.
Well duh, it's hardly surprising, when everything's considered.
My sig is too lon
When you have over 90% of all computers running on the same family of Operating Systems, with the other less then 10% trying to keep the features to work with the other 90% of the computers. Is a disaster waiting to happen. You can firewall every box, Windows could be the most secure OS in the world, but when you have 90% market share it is going to be a target. Secondly people are afraid to have an independent audits on their computer security, they worry about loosing their jobs if the auditors find a problem. Also you have the problem where people assume the first line of defence is all you need, so if a virus got threw the firewall and virus scanner it just spreads all threw the network.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The core of the problem is that users continue to not understand what they are doing or using. People expect things to "just work" and if it breaks they will have it fixed. Many people treat their cars this way. They know how to drive them, but not how to fix them if they break down. If we can't educate the users in the safe and proper use of their machines, we will continue to have such problems. If the mainstream OS continues to be riddled with security holes that grandma doesn't know how to patch, we will continue to have these 100,000 node bot nets.
Education and training actually does better security and society as a whole.
zork% mv *.asp
283 files eaten by a grue
And what good is a "federal overseer" when they have no jurisdiction over half of the network?
I say that we're no worse off for not having a top-dog. It's a meaningless, ineffective position. Why spend the money on it, much less promote the position to a direct report under the DIRHSA?
John
Politics, power struggles, board of directors, nepotism, no money: all incompatible with security.
Oh, forgot users.
Let he who is without sin...
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
some interesting & revealing quotes:
"I sure wouldn't take that job," "It only has a downside."
"It's been a mess for over four years, and hopefully the new folks will fix this,"
"In the previous incarnation, DHS and the Homeland Security Council didn't really know what to do with cyber--it's been a deer-in-the-headlights experience for them,"
"Cybersecurity clearly fell off the radar screen when they set up the department, and the department is trying to find its way,"
"the nation is applying Band-Aids, rather than developing the inherently more secure information technology that our nation requires."
Sounds like a good place for hackers/security experts to get a job, they should be giving large bonuses/salaries & get creative in order to recruit people ASAP and get them out of this mess. Try a new path...what do we have to lose?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Whoopie! Maybe Haiti will have a mole in the NSA?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Slashdot: News articles not so news-worthy?
One group (govt) may understand the threat, but is clueless on the operations side. The other group (owers) don't have the classified intelligence data on the threat, but do know the operations side of the network.
Until the two sides share both info and operations knowledge, cybersecurity isn't possible.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Goodness, who wants the Federal government to be responsible for general IT security in this country? I mean, let's just think carefully through the kind of power over the network they'd need (or say they need) to be given to achieve it.
Brrr.
While the Bushies are poster boys for complete corrupt criminality, the problem runs deeper. As Americans (I can't speak for the rest of the world but our standard of living is high enough that we have little (less) excuse), we take very little personal responsability for anything.
... slashdot(?)
Katrina was my main objection to nuclear power writ large. While I think fission is one of the better options for power generation, the culture of bureaucracy that has rotted the health and education sectors would most likely fail spectacularly during a crisis at a power plant. During a meltdown, political hacks would rush around covering their own asses while citizens - with air conditioners, automobiles and endless electricity needs - would scream that there was no planning to take care of them and that it was their birthrite to work 35 easy hours a week with iPods strapped to their heads.
And then before the next election, there would be a terror alert, and we'd vote for the same criminal gang that has been looting the country, on and off, for 25 years. As opposed to some other criminal gang that doesn't loot as much. And go back to watching TV and reading
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
All year long, they have had no one at the helm for cybersecurity. It shouldn't surprise anyone. Let's take a job that many different agencies struggled to keep up with before, then add the requirement that they all reorganize into DHS, where instead of computer security being their number one focus, it is one of many concerns. I would bet the funding for DHS compsec is less than the total spent by the seperate agency committees. There is only so much you can save by pooling resources, and I would agrue it gets lost when you have to compete for attention with WMDs, IEDs and other serious physical security threats.
"Unqualified" can be handled by becoming qualified.
"Unqualified" can be handled by finding and hiring qualifed assistants / advisors / etc.
What we have is a situation where an unqualified person is put in charge of an agency and spends his/her time there working on his/her political connections using the agency's resources. So, over time, the agency is less capable of handling its mission than it was when that person started.
But that's how our current politicians reward those who've helped them get into office. And it's not likely to change.
Much of the Federal government has a sub-optimal track record in the security arena. In March of 2004 Rick Forno published an article (with links) that summarized Uncle Sam's security issues:
The farce of federal cybersecurity
(That's the title Rick used, btw.)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
And are staffed with lowest bidders. Is anyone surprised?
NSA and CIA disallowed any Windows based products in house except for unsecured desktop boxes and as a upfront web server (but they are simply traps). Now they are under extreme pressure from "above" to allow Windows and windows products in-house, no matter what the security costs are. When politicians make decisions, and not the experts, then we end up with 9/11s. After all, that is exactly what 9/11 and Iraqi invasion were.
honestly, wtf is the point of this department anyway. shouldn't it be the responsiblity of each organisation to secure it's own IT? there doesn't seem to be much need for this. i mean what do they do all day? the FBI is already the ones who investigate crimes, CIA keeps and eye on things outside your borders. seems like a big fucking waste of money.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In IT or economics, the rules are the same. Government doesn't provide security, freedom provides security - in this case meaning free software. I know this will come as a shocker for some people, but the copyright incentive system that government promotes by it's vary nature incentivises poor security too. Solve that problem and the security problem will solve itself.
9/11 was preventable. We got pwned by leaving the cockpit doors open even though it was "common" knowledge that the most effective way to thwart hijackings was to NEVER let the bad guys take control of the airplane. If they can manage to crash it, or kill every passenger, so be it. El Al figured this out in the 70's, yet the FAA was too fucking stupid to pay attention.
Similarly, the Bush administration ignored the valuable information it received from Richard Clarke and even their own Condoleezza Rice. Their motives are unknown, but it's worth considering that maybe they wanted a war from the beginning. The cost can be measured in the trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives.
Hurricane Katrina was an act of nature. Maybe it was a side effect of intelligent design, but that doesn't matter. The lesson is that valuable information was ignored. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that category 3 levees won't hold a category 5 storm. A stomping wonder horse could have saved more lives than the horse judge BushCo put in charge of FEMA.
Cybersecurity is nothing to joke about, yet the one company which has been responsible for the most damage has already been given a walk for other serious crimes. This government will do nothing to make them act responsibly. MS isn't the only one, but they are the prime example. Banks are another obvious concern, but I don't think the Feds will keep them in control now any more than they did during the S&L scandal of the 80's. We shouldn't be surprised. Bush is a family man, and his family has historically put their own interests above those of the USA.
There was a plot to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower. We've known planes were considered as weapons for years.
But planes are physical objects. They cause physical damage. Normal, healthy people can be killed from physical damage.
What's the very worst that can happen if the Internet goes down?
That's not a rhetorical question. Think of the worst situation you can and then think of whether it would be better/safer to not have the Internet connected to whatever it is. Nuclear plant cyber-attack? Why have them on the 'net in the first place? Dam flooding a town? Same thing.
The first thing any "cybersecurity czar" should be doing is making sure that the potential for damage is reduced.
If the worst thing that they can do is to steal your identify and money online, then you're "safe" in that it won't kill you or physically cripple you.
But that takes thought and expertise in evaluating the real threat.
FEMA can do nothing but react to an event and throw more debt at the problem. Unfortunately this leads to problems down the road - not only does it push the federal government closer to insolvency - but it leads to all kinds of expectations on the part of locals who develop the "we'll just sit back and wait for the calvary" mentality. Not only this, but you end up with gross inequity in the response: federal dollars to New Orleans for Katrina are already about 5 times the aid sent to Florida for four hurricanes combined. FEMA has given out some $600,000,000 in "emergency cash disbursements" so far, with many people upset that only the first 10,000 or so were given $2,000 cash cards. New Hampshire recently saw a few hundred people flooded out and it wouldn't shock me in the slightest if some of them file lawsuit under the equal protection clause asking for $2,000 cash cards, FEMA-paid apartments around the country and the like.
Local emergencies should be handled by city, the county, the state and then the federal. In that order. And the federal should not be allowed to call any of the shots: they should provide resources only but all decisions should be made by the local leaders.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Check TFA and you'll see where it's talking about those professionals leaving now.
It used to be computer engineers who made computer networks secure. Now it's the police. How stupid.
Someone wants a raise and a bigger budget.
If the Department of Homeland Paranoia were to implement such a system, I feel confident they'd score an A on their next evaluation, and would be as close to invulnerable as you can be using a computational system. People may disagee - and probably will - but I'd like to know where they think they'd be able to break in.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But by "responsible" I mean "It's your ass that gets fined/fired/jailed if there's a problem".
I don't mean just saying "I take responsiblity".
Responsiblity means that you pay the consequences.
If someone cracks my systems at work and gets away with customer data, I'm the one they fire. I'm "responsible". But I don't see anyone in our government actually being "responsible". That's the whole purpose of bureaucracy. The "responsibility" is diffused until it doesn't exist in sufficient quantity with any one person for that person to bear any of the consequences.
Nice way to get the Bush dig in there. While I do agree that Bush is the poster boy for corruptness, dont forget that both parties are a bunch of corrupt criminals. Do yourself a favor and stop being an idealogue. I give this post a 2/10 on the troll factor.
The problem is too much duplicate effort, and the wrong people in charge of things.
NIST, part of commerce, has come out with good documentation on information security. They have also created guides on host OS security duplicating NSA & DISA efforts.
DISA, an agency within DOD, is the proponent for the Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs). These STIGs are the best, most updated guides on technical security within the US govt, and mandatory for DOD components.
NSA, an agency within DOD, is the proponent for the Security Recommendation Guides (SRGs).
DHS has created???????? They fund stuff from other agencies essentially.
Until one agency within the fed that has the power to disconnect all agencies, reviews everyone's C&A documentation, standardizes security efforts, controls funding, then we'll have a woeful state within the US govt. It is just too balkanized.
Homeland security was created to bring all the information gathered through all the intellegence agencys into one place so that we as a nation could better fight the outside influences that are just poised and waiting to tear down American. Because we all know how these people hate us Americans because of our Freedom. And you know who you are.
And after hearing what this government agency was designed to do is anyone suprised to hear that it is ineffective? More government agencies and governing bodies does not equate to more effective or efficent intellegence decimation. If the FBI, CIA, and the NSA cannot seam to communicate information back and forth and then analyze it, how is throwing another agency (Homeland Security) going to change this?
Truth be told, America already has more than enough Government to Protect its interests. To bad the Government cannot seam to focus on America! Really what should have happened after Sept 11th is not the creation of more government bodies. But fewer government bodies with the focus being on the protection of American interests. Someone should have lost thier job over the fiasco of Sept 11th, People should have lost thier jobs after the bumbling of hurrican Katrina relief efforts (and not this pansy assed stepping down, and somone should get fired for not being on top of cyber security of US interests.
We would be better off disolving Homeland security and hiring a private company to do the same work. At least if they screwed it up we could always go shopping for a better company.
Yup, you heard right. Zippo....nada...nothing. They have NO plan. Imagine a corporation as large as the US Govt. having no plan. Gives me the warm and fuzzies thinking about it. I wonder if they even have CIRT/CERTs, but one would gather that they don't.
They covered this topic in the recent Information Security magazine if anyone wants to check it out.
>While I do agree that Bush is the poster boy for corruptness, dont forget that both parties are a bunch of corrupt criminals.
I'm a lesser evilist. No love for the DLC, but they are significantly easier on the long term health of the country and the standard of living of the lower income 99% of the population. Pop quiz: Who balanced the Federal budget and in what year? Question 2: Under which post WWII administration was the most national debt accumulated?
> Do yourself a favor and stop being an idealogue.
Why stop being an idealogue? I don't blindly accept dishwater corporate Democratic party me-to-ism, kneejerk lefty utopianism, sectarian rightwing culture warring or highschool libertarianism.
So if I complain about Clinton cheating on his wife I'm a patriot, if I complain about out of control cronyism or Haliburton overchages I'm (supporting the terrorists) an idealogue? The 'conservative' movement since Ronald Reagan is completely morally bankrupt (and not very conservative except socially).
> I give this post a 2/10 on the troll factor.
It's a start. I'll try harder next time. Why did the Bush dig get on your nerves? You vote for that idiot and the continued looting of the US and now have buyer remorse? Or should we stick to tech here in which case I USE FLASH (let the flame war begin)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
and list was Homeland Security is prepared for.
What a coincidence, that is where I keep my briefcase.
A cyberterrorist attack could hit any moment. DHS needs to have the following items on hand to distribute:
.. however some with expired TTL's may have to be left behind).
1,000,000 emergency email clients
100,000 fast-deploying RSS readers
5,000,000 excel-compatible spreadsheets (they might have to tap foreign companies to produce this)
20,000,000 Windows-compatible operating systems
plenty of duct tape
Thankfully, DHS has already executed several successful evacuation drills:
1) with coordination from the major tier-1 ISPs, we can evacute up to 1 terabyte per day from the major population centers. (including packets with damaged headers
2) basic instant messaging services can be brought back on line within 8 hours. (full emoticon graphics after 10).
3) they even have a backup supply of viruses and malware which, thanks to the assistance of Microsoft Corporation, can be deployed in approximately 15 minutes so that knowledge workers can "feel at home" during difficult times.
Not to mention a team of professionally trained counselors to comfort those who feel lost and helpless without their Lotus Notes.
I'm sure with more planning and understanding, and working with the private sector, DHS can make us all feel a little safer from a cyberterrorist attack.
I read the article, and am a sysadmin, and really, what purpose would such a position serve? Is there a specific job description of responsibilities for the position? The article indicates that the individual would "coordinate the response" to an Internet attack, but at what level do they start to become involved, and really, with as dynamic as the Internet is and companies continually coming and going, being bought out, etc., how would they constantly maintain communications with all the players? As soon as any company receives a denial of service, do they contact the individual in this position so they can see if its important enough to warrant a coordinated response? If so, does the person in the position receive thousands of emails daily from concerned sysadmin's and filter through this? And even if they warrant my situation critical, what are they going to do for me? I already have the contact info for my upstream provider, and certainly they will be one of the first people I will be calling and working with on my own. If it is a major issue, I would expect they would be working with their upstream provider, etc. And back to coordinating with specific companies - our company had an international corporate VPN solution through AT&T, and getting support on this was a stellar effort for all involved, as within AT&T itself they were often confused about what "group" owned the VPN solution, and it was a consistently major undertaking to find the group to get us any help. It sounds like a position with little purpose. Not that this would be surprising...
You know, I'm ALL for educating the user, but being in education, I know when and when it's not possible to teach.
If it's a system of users on a network of a non-500 company, then mass education and mandatory training of employees just WILL NOT happen.
So, what's the realistic answer? Real tech troubleshooters. Yes, real-- because there are plenty of admins out there that are so jaded with users that they won't even help them as much as they need to be helped.
What is needed is a scramble crew of techies that know there way around windows like we all want our users to be. They should know how to get rid of viruses, spyware, install drivers, programs, back up, migrate, import/export, troubleshoot, etc. Common sense to us, but completely foreign to your standard user.
Users do NOT have time to be techies. They don't have the drive to be techies.
We don't expect NASCAR drivers to jump out of their cars when they go into a pitstop do we? No! There are professionals waiting and willing to fix the problems with a smile!
SUMMARY: Yes, it would be nice to have educated users, but they won't be educated. Thus, we techies have to work around them. That's why techies are hired. Any techies that complain about ignorant users need to reread their job descriptions. If you don't like helping people with their shortcommings, you don't belong in tech.
... you still need recourse. You can't expect that all IT solutions will be 100% secure -- some engineer/administrator along the way will make a mistake. And worse, there's still the human element: even if you plug all the holes, those on the inside can still steal or misuse information stored on the very secure platforms.
So what's the backup, that recourse? Log all events on your network: TCP/IP connections, transfer statistics, event logs, syslogs, web server logs, mail logs, DB logs, etc. Make sure you store those events in a central location and constantly analyze that information, in real-time, and historically. When you uncover a new possible exploit, build a rule to catch future occurrences, but even more important, look at the past to see who has used that exploit and prosecute their ass.Inevitably, this log centralization/aggregation costs money (how many GB/TB a day will a big corporation generate daily in logs?). A good solution: SenSage has a sophisticated log aggregator with compressed storage, blazing query speed, great real-time/historical analysis, and customers the likes of Yahoo, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Rockwell, Lockheed Martin, Fannie Mae, Australian DoD, US Census, etc.
A combination of no bid contracts and everybody else is doing it. Bids aren't just a pricetag, but a method of implementing goals. Without getting solution proposals how do you know you've gotten the best solution?
More like from the U.S. Depeartment Of We're Not Going To Tell You Anything You Didn't Already Know About Security
No one cares about security until they get burned. Once burned the battle cry goes for awhile and fizzles as most don't give a rats ass about security beyond looking politically correct. It is why so many sites and users get hacked.
And here is a hint, most get hacked from the inside out, that is - some twit loads a spyware or malicious program and claims ignorance when it happens. More like carelessness but management often overlooks it.
Safe computing is like safe sex, use some precaution and don't be a slut and download everything you can click on.
Am I the only person who is tired of the rhetoric "Since September 11th, each and every American's life has changed"? For those outside of the goverment, and particularly the military, has it really? Certainly we have mangled the Bill of Rights beyond recognition, but am I the only one whose reaction to the 2nd attack on the WTC was "well, it finally happened?" And the notion that using commercial airliners as weapons was unthought of? Given that Tom Clancy is a best selling author, the odds that no one in US security infrastructure read about that scenario is close to zero.
The White House Staff will be renamed the Ministry of Truth. And the Department of Homeland Security will be renamed The Ministry of Love. Although it might be pronounced Mininistry of Love. Alternate names include Pompatus of Love. Remember, Big Bubba loves you!
It's a real problem. The President's key job is is appoint the top people in the federal government, about 3000 of them. That determines how well the Government works. This is not one of the better administrations in that area.
It's not a party thing. Some presidents do a good job in this area, and some don't. Eisenhower was very good, Kennedy was good at it, Johnson was OK, Nixon was terrible, Ford wasn't around long enough to matter, Carter was mediocre, Reagan was spotty, Bush I was OK, Clinton was OK, and Bush II is terrible.
May be slightly off topic but...
Has anybody else ever heard of the cybercore? Apparently, the U.S. government selected 6 (or 5?) schools to be part of their program to educate students to work as database security specialists for the government. Similiar to the army core, the government will pay for a few years of college in return for a few years of work.
Sorry but I couldn't find any good links, although I know the University of Tulsa participates. Just wanted to point out a possible positive way that the government is responding to the lack of security experts.
I'm not the CyricZ from GameFAQs. My name is Cyric Zndovzny. I think his name is Scott Zdankiewicz. We're different people. I am, however, a vocal opponent of the forums at their site. I found out about that site after somebody pointed out that he was also using the username I'm using here.
In any case, the mainstream media puts up token opposition. But it's not true opposition in any way. I mean, does NBC really want to point out his flaws? Probably not, considering they're owned by General Electric. And General Electric is in the war industry. And Bush has perhaps been the greatest thing going for such industrialists, considering his interest in starting numerous wars.
The media is neither conservative nor liberal. It's corporatist. And as such it won't act as the media should, truly questioning the government all of the time.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I expect people pay for software/hardware with the idea what they are using should "just work" (assuming they are following the proper operating procedures). Maybe marketters should stop spreading this idea and be more realistic if it's not true.
Many people treat their cars this way. They know how to drive them, but not how to fix them if they break down.
Some reasons for this include:
While I agree users need to be more educated about the operation of their computer equipment, until there are consequences for those who don't (like no internet access) I don't see how you're going to get anyone to play along. Why put forth the time and energy to be "properly trained" when you can do what you want right now just as easily. Wouldn't the average motorist be a worse driver if it wasn't illegal to drive without a valid license? People wouldn't try to operate their cars on roads by any set rules or guidence if there were no consequences for not doing so. That is exactly how computers are now.
I thought their being unprepared was a given
That is one of the funniest comments I've read in a while.
Qxe4
Now, if I wanted to serve as a central point for dissemination of highly important and urgent information to a world of computer experts, I'd probably provide an RSS or Atom feed, wouldn't you think? CERT (a subset of FEMA) doesn't. Why?
Exsqueeze me? I can't seem to find the "protection from Hurricanes" clause in the Constitution. Or the Bill from Congress that made the Federal government responsible for plugging up the laundry list of security lapses in sMegmaSoft Windoze.
Here's an idea, let's lobby for a bill that makes the use of Linux mandatory for all desktop computers that communicate over the internet.
Oh, you didn't want the government to SOLVE the problem, you just want to bash the current administration.
Here's a clue - the freedom to whine about your problems in a public forum is tightly coupled to a government that doesn't run your life for you - including kissing all your boo-boos and making them go away.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
"Or should we stick to tech here in which case I USE FLASH"
If Flash plays on a filtered web browser with nothing to view it, is it really playing?
Sorry you missed the last few months here in America, but we just found out that the "current administration" destroyed our security infrastructure and left us vulnerable to an inevitable, long-predicted hurricane. Killing thousands in a preventable flood, destroying an essential port and one of America's oldest cities. While robbing us blind of our rights and money behind rhetoric of unlimited power in scrapping the old security systems. Which protected us from threats like this.
You're the one who's whining. Echoing some long-discredited Republican talking points about "self reliance" and "socialism", and all kinds of nonsense about irrelevant laws about Linux. We've got laws about how FEMA protects us from threats, and your boys' FEMA collapsed into a total disaster. Read that Constitution, understand that you and I are "the people", and that we produce the government to protect us. Not the other way around, where whiners like you are created by a discredited government to protect them from people like me who can see the truth when it rips across the landscape in front of our eyes.
--
make install -not war
Dismantled our security system?
The only thing that was dismantled was the $20M in funding for repairing the Mississippi river Levies that was diverted into building a Casino by the governor of Louisiana. The cries of distress at the lack of Federal aid for the resulting (as you say "preventable") flood were a smokescreen to cover for good old-fashioned political corruption.
You actually assert that befoe the Bush adminstration, there was a "security system" that protected us from hurricanes? Are you delusional or just amazingly honesty-challenged?
I lived in LA for 10 years (8 of which were during democratic presidential terms). The "safety net" for hurricanes was simply to run away, then come back and rebuild. No one came to help us out. We handled our own problems. We finally got fed up an left for good. Which is a lesson a lot of people need to learn. If you put yourself in harms way , no one owes it to you to protect you from the consequences of your foolishness. Walk in front of a bus, and it isn't the governments fault if you get hit.
The severity of this Hurricane was unprecedented, and the magnitude of the damage was huge. But that doesn't somehow magically create prescience on the part of previous adminstrations because the crises they faced were small enough to deal with easily.
Name one crisis, just one, in the US in the last 50 years that was anywhere near this magnitude, that democrats handled better....
What would Al Gore have done differently, besides claiming to have invented the electric pump?
You, my good sir, in spite of the vehemence of your attacks, are devoid of facts, and your assetions are just nonsensical.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
When I lived in New Orleans, in the first half of Bush Jr, we saw 2 F4-5 hurricanse just miss the city in one week. That year Bush responded to the Corps(e) of Engineers $70M levee budget request with $3M, which Congress boosted to only $5M. That $70M would have put the levees to the point where they would not as likely have been overwhelmed, or as much, after the 3 years of construction since. And the previous FEMA manager, DeWitt, actually knew how to run an emergency management agency, unlike Bush's crony, Brown.
This was a total failure, by Bush and his crony administration. Those are the facts. Your nonsense about previous administrations, speculations about Gore (who? oh, the guy who used to be VP, when FEMA was reliable), are pure partisan emotion, and any facts therein are irrelevant. We're talking about how we're stuck with BUSH NOW. Your Republican apologies, hypothetical comparisons to people from several administrations ago, show that all you've got is the ability to steal elections, not run a country. So, yeah, I'm emotional: the fact is that your boys have fucked over Louisiana. And your cold bullshit about how that's OK because administrations almost a decade ago "got lucky", before Bush turned FEMA into a useless appendage of a catastrophic DHS, is sickening. Especially because the destruction of your home of a decade while it relied on your team of incompetents shows that you'd sell your grandma for a Bush contribution. That makes me emotional. That you don't care shows how much of a threat are you and your partisans.
And now we'll stand by for the inevitable stories of how a "perfect Internet storm" destroyed America's cybersecurity, and how Bush is "responsible" for any mistakes that anyone his Republican government convicts that his Republican partisans like you don't forgive. Ah-nah-nay, gringo.
--
make install -not war