The National Journal has an interview with Michael Brown in its new issue that discusses why the hospital ship USS Comfort was diverted to Mississippi when it had been bound for New Orleans, even though the governor of Mississippi had already told the US Navy and Northcom that he didn't need it.
Why? Because Trent Lott got on the phone and started screaming like a spoiled baby. From the story:
One of the problems that [NorthCom Cmdr. Timothy] Keating ran into, which I found embarrassing during Katrina, was with the USS Comfort. I had requested the ship, and it's moving into Mississippi, because Mississippi wanted it for medical purposes. So I gave the order through NorthCom to move that ship there. As it was making its way to Mississippi, Mississippi decided they no longer needed it. The Comfort is primarily a medical ship, so I made the decision, "Steam on to New Orleans, because we can use you in New Orleans for medical triage."
More below the fold...
And a certain U.S. senator became ballistic that that ship was going to bypass Mississippi. That senator called and screamed at me. And I said, "Well, your state doesn't want it. Your governor doesn't need it anymore, so it is best utilized somewhere else." [The senator responded,] "Well, I don't care. I want it in my state." He called [DHS Secretary Michael] Chertoff and convinced Chertoff to use the ship there. And Keating is, I'm sure, ready to pull his hair out, because there is an e-mail that finally gets to me that says, "I'm fed up. Somebody tell me where the Comfort is going or I'm sending it back to Baltimore," or wherever it was. It was that kind of baloney that was going on. And it was [Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent] Lott. [The senator's office did not return National Journal's calls for comment.]
This is absolutely disgusting. How many lives were lost in New Orleans because of Trent Lott's personal pique? Trent Lott has been treated like a victim by the media because he lost his third (or was it his fourth?) house in the storm. It turns out that he was a big part of the problem.