By: News Director Bob Longo

I'm embarrassed. Embarrassed.

Not for anything I did, but for what my government failed to do. And talking to many friends and neighbors these past few days, I'm not the only one feeling this way.

Sure, some good things are starting to happen along the Gulf Coast. Troops are starting to keep the peace. Supplies are starting to make it to the thousands of conclaves of survivors. But it's only a start. Unimaginably, more help and supplies are still needed.

The trickle we see coming in is days late and thousands of lives short.

We'll turn the corner eventually. And when we do, we must look back at these horrible days and deal with the blame. Embrace the blame. Embrace it so future lives are not squandered because of stupid, slow-acting bureaucrats and politicians who were invisible and unavailable in the clutch and who only reacted when pushed -- and only then for show, with photo ops and prime-time cable talk show slots to spin their story.

I watched in amazement Sunday while a career politician, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told ABC's George Stephanapolous that we mustn't play the blame game. Instead of worrying about what happened and why, we should spend all our time and efforts moving forward. Forget the past. Just move ahead. Blindly.

That's the reaction of a man who is afraid that the finger of blame will point back toward him and other career politicians and bureaucrats like him.

If the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching pictures and stories from this week have taught us anything, it is that we must help those in need now with all the might we can muster on every level possible. And that we must also investigate with steel nerves why our government failed so miserably and caused the deaths of so many Americans.

Find out what went wrong and who screwed up, fix it and get rid of those responsible.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has the sound and fury of someone who is up to the task. Here's her take:

"... I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency. Twenty-four hours later, the president has yet to answer my call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA, now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at hand.

"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims -- far more efficiently than buses -- FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the president, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government."

Homeland security IS a photo op. It is a sad billion-dollar joke, with punch lines delivered daily to elderly grandmothers being frisked in airport lines.

With this current cast of characters in charge, homeland security is a week's supply of food and water in your own well-armed home. Depend on no one but yourself when the going gets tough. Because at that point, the feds we should be depending on will only be seen in tightly scripted photo ops and on prime-time cable talk shows.