Exercise

I don't know about you, but I feel safer.

Warning an outbreak may be inevitable, the White House on Saturday conducted a test of its readiness for a feared bird flu pandemic and said federal agencies fared "quite well" without offering any details.

Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and other top officials took part in the four-hour tabletop drill, which officials said was designed to assess the level of federal preparedness for a possible outbreak of bird flu or another deadly virus.

"This is about being ready for what inevitably will come," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said.

But the White House refused to divulge details about the exercise and the test results, and officials said afterward that it was clear that state and local
governments would have to assume a leading role.

"Quite frankly, I think we did quite well," White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend said of the federal agencies that took part in the exercise.

Frankness has a limit. Since officials aren't releasing details of the exercise, we are just going to have to take her word for it. And we can do so with confidence, because we know administration officials would never lie to make their failures look like successes.

While we're talking about Townsend, she said

the biggest lesson from the test was the leading role that state and local governments would have to play in responding to a pandemic.

"This is not going to be a federal answer to the problem," she said. "The federal government has got a support role to play. But frankly, I think, really very important is the state and local efforts."

Is that what they talked about in the exercise, how to pass the buck? Well, according to White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, the biggest lesson the exercise yeilded was that Americans should not look to the federal government for answers. Of course, few Americans needed an exercise to tell them that. Despite the best efforts of the administration and MSM, Katrina is still fresh in our minds.

HHS has projected that in a pandemic 92 million Americans will become sick and that as many as 2 million will die. Schools will close, businesses will be disrupted and essential services may break down.

Approximately 20 officials took part (in the exercise), including Townsend, Leavitt, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.

U.S. President George W. Bush did not participate.

What? Why not? With HHS warning that 92 million Americans will get sick and 2 million will die, and the White House warning that an outbreak may be inevitable, it seems pretty important. But Bush was tending to a different sort of exercise.

Bush, who went for a bike ride in Maryland during the preparedness drill, has proposed a $7.1 billion bird flu plan, but Congress has yet to fund it.

Oh, that's right. Bush doesn't show up for work on weekends, unless he's overseas trying to bolster sagging poll numbers or pandering the base by signing bullshit legislation about feeding tubes.

While Bush was riding his bike Saturday, four more American soldiers were killed in Iraq.