We all know that George W. Bush said FEMA Director Michael Brown did a “heckuva job” after Hurricane Katrina. An Interior Department report gives us a glimpse of what a heckuva job looks like:

Hundreds of federal search-and-rescue workers and large numbers of boats, aircraft and bulldozers were offered to FEMA in the hours immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, but the aid proposals were either ignored or not effectively used, newly released documents show.

The Interior Department, which made the offers, also proposed dispatching as many as 400 of its law enforcement officers to provide security in Gulf Coast cities ravaged by flooding and looting. But nearly a month would pass before the Federal Emergency Management Agency put the officers to work, according to an Interior document obtained by The Washington Post.

…

Acting in the “immediate aftermath” of the hurricane, Interior officials provided FEMA with a comprehensive list of assets that were “immediately available for humanitarian and emergency assistance,” according to the memo, dated Nov. 7, 2005. Those assets included more than 300 boats, 11 aircraft, 119 pieces of heavy equipment, 300 dump trucks and other vehicles for clearing debris, as well as Interior-owned campgrounds and other land that could be used as staging areas or emergency shelters.

Also offered were rescue crews from the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, teams specially trained for urban search-and-rescue missions using flat-bottom boats.

“Clearly these assets and skills were precisely relevant to the post-Katrina environment,” the memo said. Yet, the rescue teams and boats were not considered in the federal government’s planning for hurricane disasters, the memo states.

There’s a rule called Hanlon’s Razor, which says, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” But I don’t think the Bush Administration response to Katrina — or in many other cases where they’ve fumbled aid for non-wealthy Americans — can be adequately explained by stupidity. Incompetence, once again, is a cover story.

The Washington Post has a follow-up on Bush’s promises to “do what it takes” in the Gulf Coast after Katrina.