The 520-page document titled “A Failure of Initiative” couldn’t be more appropriate to describe the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

In the report released Feb. 15, the House Government Reform Committee criticized several top administration officials but singled out one ill-fated fellow, our Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

When the White House and the Department of Homeland Security were informed that the levees in New Orleans had been breached on Aug. 29, 2005, they decided it would be better to wait it out, not acknowledging the severity of the impending crisis. And it’s a good thing we waited it out because as our president, who was on vacation in Texas, said in statement later, he was pleased that New Orleans “had dodged a bullet.”

The report placed the blame on top Homeland Security advisors for failing to inform Bush of the flooding that occurred after the hurricane. Apparently, Bush wasn’t able to turn on a television when it was the headline story of every news channel. The disaster resulted in the deaths of more than 1,300 people across five states and it left hundreds of thousands displaced, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Back to Chertoff: the target of the report. He is responsible for delaying federal aid and he initiated the National Response Plan “late, ineffectively, or not at all,” according to the report.

He was in hot water at a Senate committee meeting held on Wednesday Feb. 15, when lawmakers asked why he attended a bird flu conference in Atlanta the day after the hurricane. Chertoff completely lacked leadership by making the decision to learn more about avian flu instead of traveling to New Orleans to make sure federal response was helping people. In addition to weak leadership, there was a lack of human compassion.

At the least, Chertoff could have seen the horrible sight for himself and made an attempt to give reassuring statements that the government would do all they could do to help.

But that just didn’t happen. And now the administration is acknowledging its mistakes - too little too late.

And they’ll keep Chertoff around because firing him means that the administration would be admitting that it failed.

Granted, we can’t place the blame of Hurricane Katrina solely on the shoulders of the federal administration because there were local and state officials who also failed. However, when our government officials, who were all too busy on their summer vacations, ignore a crisis then the public has reason to be cynical of their level of leadership and responsibility.