Photo by Alan Chin/BagNewsNotes

Mike had this in his Blog Round Up, but it deserves its own post.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

CREW provided thousands of pages of documents to the Washington Post that revealed how the federal government failed to take advantage of offers of assistance from foreign nations after Hurricane Katrina. The documents can be found on our website here. The United States government didn't collect most of the $854 million offered:

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government's difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

Administration officials acknowledged in February 2006 that they were ill prepared to coordinate and distribute foreign aid and that only about half the $126 million received had been put to use. Now, 20 months after Katrina, newly released documents and interviews make clear the magnitude of the troubles.