Bush leaves cities defenseless against nuclear attack after blowing $300 billion on security

[I'm saying "cities" instead of "the country," because the cities are the part of the country that's in danger. All the ports are in danger from loose nukes and dirty bombs, and nobody's going to lob a nuclear weapon into some Republican stronghold like the middle of Wyoming.]

McClatchy:

Although the Bush administration has warned repeatedly about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack [especially during election campaigns] and spent more than $300 billion to protect the homeland [or, in the original German, Heimat], the government remains ill-prepared to respond to a nuclear catastrophe.

Katrina all over again. Except worse, of course. Whoopsie! This is McClatchy, not Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson, so I don't have to ram the obvious conclusion home: the reporter does it all by themselves:

Experts and government documents suggest that, absent a major preparedness push, the U.S. response to a mushroom cloud could be worse than the debacle after Hurricane Katrina, possibly contributing to civil disorder and costing thousands of lives.

Well, shit. Of course there's going to be civil disorder--that's why Bush has made it easier to Federalize the National Guard! The Pentagon's view:

"The United States is unprepared to mitigate the consequences of a nuclear attack," Pentagon analyst John Brinkerhoff concluded in a July 31, 2005, draft of a confidential memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We were unable to find any group or office with a coherent approach to this very important aspect of homeland security. ...

"This is a bad situation. The threat of a nuclear attack is real, and action is needed now to learn how to deal with one."

And, as usual with the malAdministration, it's all hat and no cattle:

Col. Jill Morgenthaler, Illinois' director of homeland security, said there's a "disconnect" between President Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's nuclear threat talk and the administration's actions.

I'm shocked! Shocked!

"I don't see money being focused on actual response and mitigation to a nuclear threat," she said.

Read the whole article--the detail is just horrible. To take just one example:

Over the last three years, several federal agencies have taken some steps in nuclear disaster planning. The Department of Health and Human Services has drawn up "playbooks" for a range of attack scenarios and created a Web site to instruct emergency responders in treating radiation victims.

Great. A web site. Like I'm going to be able to log in during a nuclear catastrophe.

Honestly, where's the good explanation for Bush's complete failure to provide for the common defense? In increasing order of malevolence and "vileness"--let me just say a special Fuck right here for you, Howie--these are the explanations I can think of:

1. The Republicans are too busy looting the government to actually run it ($300 billion is a big pot of money, eh?). This is well known as the "incompetence dodge."

2. The Republicans figure more chaos will be good for them, so they create it whenever they can. This is the Autocopropachic, Neo-con Dodge.

3. The Republicans--possibly, to give them some credit, unconsciously--want cities to be destroyed, because what's left tends to be Republican (just like New Orleans after Katrina. This is the Rovian Bankshot Dodge.

4. The Republicans--possibly, to give them some credit, unconsciously--want cities to be destroyed, because that's where the gays and the blacks and the atheists live. This is the Pander-to-the base Dodge.

5. All the important Republicans, and the winger billionaires, already have their bunkers lined up, and their mercenaries hired, so they don't give a shit, and will pull the ladder up after them as soon as the radioactive shit hits the fan. This is Shooter's Dodge.

I realize, of course, in a complicated political system like ours, different players may have different motives, and these explanations may overlap.

But can anyone think of a good reason why Republicans are leaving cities unprotected from nuclear attack, especially when all their policies in the Middle East are making such an attack more likely?