Ted Koppel on Preparing for Disaster

Ted Koppel on ABC News Nightline 2005-08-30:

We don't like anticipating disasters. It suggests pessimism and America is largely a nation of optimists.

But when you look at the damage inflicted by an accidental storm, you have to think about the sheer havoc that an intentional terrorist attack may produce one of these days.

We want to believe that no one will ever use a weapon of mass destruction against one of our cities. But it's almost inevitable that someone will. We don't like to hear that; we certainly don't want to contemplate the consequences. But we need to talk about it and we need to plan for it.

The very worst thing you can do when confronting a potential disaster is to take the position that it'll never happen to us.

As of two days after the hurricane struck, the Bush administration was still maintaining that it could never happen.

This isn't a matter of "the blame game"; it is a matter of critical urgency that we remove Michael Brown and other incompetent Bush cronies before they can do any further damage to the recovery effort.