By Scott Wright

Four weeks ago in this column, I wrote with great emotion about my disgust with the federal government's response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which killed over 1,000 people and has left hundreds of thousands more homeless.

At one point in the article, while attempting to describe my disgust with the dismal situation forced on the people of New Orleans by President George W. Bush's initial disregard for the seriousness of the disaster and the federal government's dismal response in the days after, I wrote the following: "Over 25,000 people were standing in knee-deep water in front of the Louisiana Superdome, waiting for a fleet of buses that were told not to come there because the National Guard -- the National-friggin' Guard! -- feared for the safety of both the refugees and themselves."

It seemed obvious to me as I wrote those words that anyone who read them would understand that my beef was with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government entities that responded poorly to the disaster along the Gulf Coast and in the process caused a situation that was so dire that not even the expertly trained and heavily armed men and women of the Guard felt safe supervising the rescue operation.

To my surprise and confusion (given the context in which the phrase appeared) several members of the local National Guard unit apparently mistook my exclamation as a slight directed towards them instead of at the president and his pitiful people.

After learning of this misconception, I immediately wrote a letter to the local Guard commander apologizing for the misunderstanding. As I told him when he came into the office to speak with me, I've known people who have served in the Guard through the years and I have the utmost respect for the sacrifices they made and the jobs they did. I also promised the commander I would apologize for my ambiguity in a future column.

I apologize here to anyone who misunderstood me. I should have written my thoughts in a way that made it abundantly clear which branch of the federal government I'd like to drop an F-bomb on.

Last week I read newspaper stories detailing how, during an appearance before a congressional committee investigating exactly what went wrong after Katrina, former FEMA director Mike Brown blamed pretty much everyone in the world except himself for the dismal response in the days after the hurricane. Brown sat down in front of those congressmen and also verbally rolled over on President Bush, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin while he was at it. He wagged an accusatory finger at Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco, as well as the Pentagon and the Dept. of Homeland Security. I think Brown may have even said something derogatory about the restrictive nature of Buddy Ryan's 46 defense while he was at it.

Needless to say, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle gave Brown both barrels for his cowardly accusations. It was pretty embarrassing, both for Brown and the commander in chief who hired him.

I guess Brown figured if he was going down he was taking as many people as he could down with him. I'll bet you six months of house arrest that if Phillip Jordan happened to catch the replay of Brown's testimony on C-SPAN, a tear of admiration rolled down his check as he watched.

The only thing Brown said that made sense to me was that he "should have just resigned" earlier, in order to spare the men and women of FEMA the ridicule they have endured.

Sounds like a terrific idea to me. If he'd thought of it a few weeks sooner he probably could've saved a lot of folks along the Gulf Coast an awful lot of misery. Maybe if we could get Brown's former boss to resign, too, Americans could begin the process of recovering from the multiple missteps he has forced us all to endure.

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.