Nearly four years after Sept. 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. In those four years, between the destruction of the towers in New York and the breach of the levees in New Orleans, the federal government - despite creating a whole new department delegated to ensure homeland security and spending more than a ton of money on it - apparently learned nothing about disaster preparation. When Katrina subsided, more than 1,300 people were dead and hundreds of thousands of others were left homeless. The damage estimate is in the tens of billions of dollars. On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff offered apologies, regret and a weak defense of his department's actions in response to Katrina. Now, he faces a bigger problem: fixing the obviously dysfunctional megadepartment he took over in 2005. That fix should include a serious look at whether Homeland Security is too large and needs to divest itself of some agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the very least, staffing levels at FEMA need to be returned to earlier levels, with professionals - not political appointees - at the helm.

Michael Brown, head of FEMA at the time of the hurricane, has stepped down, as he should have long before Katrina hit on Aug. 29. Some might argue that it should be Chertoff's turn now, but the fact is he was probably in office too short a time to turn Homeland Security into an effective department. Even if the buck has to stop somewhere, Chertoff was hardly the only one to blame for what happened or even the most culpable.

A 520-page report on the Katrina disaster by a House special committee excoriates government officials and agencies at all levels. Aside from some individual heroes, no agency or level of government responded adequately, let alone effectively. The report, an early copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, says the federal government's biggest failure was in not recognizing the likely consequences of Katrina. "Passivity did the most damage," the report says, according to the AP.

Agencies merely reacted to a disaster when what was needed was planning. Many officials "ran around like Keystone Kops" - in the words of Sen. Joe Lieberman

 (D-Conn.) - when they should have swung into action based on a plan.

They knew the hurricane was coming and not just in the immediate days before landfall as Katrina plowed through the Gulf of Mexico. A storm of such magnitude had been predicted. The consequences of such a storm on the levees of New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast in general were well known. This was not a bolt out of the blue. Yet officials at every level reacted as if they were as surprised as they were on Sept. 11, 2001.

This time, let's fix the problem so that we're not surprised again by terrorists or a natural disaster. That has to be Chertoff's first responsibility.

Can Chertoff fix all the problems? I dont know, but hopefully we wont have to wait long to get our answers,

Just my opinion but I'm sticking to it"