First Barbara thinks that the victims are "comfortable," after having lost everything and in some cases everyone, that was important to them, and now George is going to "Lead the investigation into what went wrong!"

GEORGE Bush risked further antagonising his critics yesterday by rejecting calls for an independent commission to examine what went wrong in the handling of Hurricane Katrina and announced instead that he would personally lead an investigation.

Mr Bush said he was not in the business of finger-pointing and insisted it was important to establish whether the United States could respond to another major storm or an attack with weapons of mass destruction. But the US Congress, apparently unprepared to accept a single presidential inquiry, said it would hold its own hearings.

"Government at all levels failed," the Republican senator Susan Collins said after meeting the president. Announcing that the Senate governmental affairs committee would hold its own investigation, she added: "It is difficult to understand the lack of preparedness and the ineffective initial response to a disaster that had been predicted for years and for which specific dire warnings had been given for days."

On another difficult day for the president, his mother, Barbara Bush, ventured on to dangerous ground after meeting evacuees, suggesting that some of the poor who had been victims of the hurricane were benefiting from their evacuation. "So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them," she chuckled after a tour of the Houston Astrodome in Texas. "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

She later reiterated her views. "Look what's happened. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated and are in comfortable shelters."

Mrs Bush, who was accompanying her husband, the former president George Bush snr, as he and his successor, Bill Clinton, launched a national fund-raising campaign, went on: "Almost everyone I've talked to says 'We're going to move to Houston'."

Her son has faced intense criticism of his and the federal government's handling of the crisis in New Orleans and the failure to respond sooner when the scale of the disaster became clear.

Yesterday, as efforts continued to repair the breached levees which let in the floodwater and preparations were made at a giant morgue to receive the thousands of bodies expected to be recovered when the water recedes, Mr Bush called congressional leaders to the White House for their first meeting since Katrina struck.

Stung by the criticism he has faced, he said later: "What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong.

"We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD attack or another major storm."

But he rejected calls for a commission to investigate the response to the hurricane, insisting it was not the time to point fingers. "One of the things people want us to do here is play the blame game," he said. "We got to solve problems. There will be ample time to figure out what went right and what went wrong."

I got a couple words for both of them, Barbara, shut up. And Mr. President, let me save you some time and the people some money. What went wrong was a dissasterous failure in Leadership... A lot of Leadership from both sides, but most importantly, from YOU and the group of handpicked cronies like the horsetrainer you chose to run FEMA. So it is a bit late for you to LEAD anything...

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Posted by: Boyd at September 7, 2005 08:08 AM

Posted by: David Anderson at September 7, 2005 08:56 AM

Posted by: Boyd at September 7, 2005 09:03 AM

Posted by: Rogue at September 7, 2005 12:25 PM