EDITORIAL NATIONAL DISGRACE GOVERNMENT'S KATRINA RESPONSE WAS TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.

SINCE the moment the levees in New Orleans were breached by the fury of Hurricane Katrina and the water came roaring into the city, the federal response has been marred by inept and slow bureaucracy.

Who knows how many of the 1,400 dead during the disaster lost their lives because of the slow response by the Bush administration and its officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which controls the Federal Emergency Management Agency?

We may never know. But according to an investigation report due out today by a Republican congressional committee, the one-day delay in the reporting of the breach of the levees and federal action was part of an overall ``national failure.''

``At every level - individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental - we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw,'' the report says. What was particularly disturbing was the inefficient response considering how predictable it was. Experts had been warning for years that a hurricane of this magnitude could breach the levees and flood the below-sea-level city. The administration should have had the foresight to act as many as two days before the hurricane hit, the report says.

The criticism in the report, a draft of which was released Sunday, is not new. Former FEMA Chief Michael Brown lost his job over the disgraceful hurricane response. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has been soundly slammed for focusing on terrorism and not giving enough attention to emergency disaster planning. Chertoff says that criticism is not true, but still is seeking to improve communication in his department, hire more FEMA experts and to replace outdated disaster systems.

That's not all that went tremendously wrong. A report by the General Accounting Office released Monday also found that millions in the so-called expedited disbursed aid to Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims was either misspent or lost to fraud. The GAO investigators found this out firsthand, by applying for aid online with false names and identifications. A copy of an actual $2,000 check one of their fake victims was awarded is included in the report.

The GAO also reported that hundreds of thousands of dollars was awarded to applicants with invalid Social Security numbers or to properties that didn't exist.

The report's title says it all: ``FEMA's Control Weaknesses Exposed the Government to Significant Fraud and Abuse.''

More reports by a Senate committee and the White House are also examining the federal government's performance during the Hurricane Katrina response and are expected in coming months.

It's likely they will only confirm the conclusions drawn by this House report: that the federal government's Katrina response was a national disgrace that must never happen again.