Angry in the Great White North

From the memo:

Convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations, and the general public.

Spinning a message is always problematic. It puts the person in the precarious position of editing out negative information (lies of omission) or even misstating information (lies of commission).

But the notion that a government department should spin the message to other government officials, officials who should know the whole story, warts and all, in order to properly manage the government's response to the Katrina disaster, is a throwback to the CYA inter-agency in-fighting that has led to major missteps in the past. The whole point of the DHS is to pull together previously disparate agencies under one umbrella to minimize and eliminate that sort of nonsense. But it looks like the problem remains at the highest levels.

Time for an attitude adjustment, or a personnel adjustment, at FEMA.