There has never been a more prophetic series in American journalism.

Three years ago, in June 2002, The Times Picayune newspaper in New Orleans presented a five-part series titled “Washing Away.”

You can still read the entire series on the paper’s Web site, (www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/), and the words sear like the accusing fingers of the dead.

The series predicted that 200,000 people would be unable to leave the city as the hurricane approached. In a Category 5 storm, the paper said, “Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.”

Three years later, it seems the newspaper was wrong about only one thing – a weaker hurricane that actually missed hitting the city directly was enough to break the levees and flood the city.

A direct hit by a Category 5 hurricane would have resulted in far more deaths and destruction. Tens of thousands might have died.

Despite the clear and present danger, local officials didn’t even use the city’s fleet of school buses to evacuate the elderly and disabled.

Perhaps there has been a larger failure of governmental responsibility in American history. But we can’t think of it. At the local, state and national level, the incompetence and lack of planning were breathtaking.

Tuesday, members of Congress were doing their ritual chest thumping while flogging the idiot of the hour: former FEMA Director Michael Brown. The display made for great TV and certainly impressed voters back home, but it was essentially pointless.

Anyone who doesn’t understand that Brown was in over his head has been unconscious for the past month. Where were the steamed-up members of the U.S. House when The Times Picayune series predicted all this? Where were they when the Bush administration was cutting money for FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? Where were they when wetlands rules were being loosened to allow the destruction of buffer and barrier islands?

Katrina wasn’t as much a natural disaster as a governmental disaster. The basic function of government is to protect the health and safety of its citizens from known and anticipated risks. Katrina simply revealed the inability in this case of all three levels government to do so, not just in the aftermath of the storm, but in the face of a threat that has existed for decades.

Now the politicians who have failed to perform have generously offered to investigate themselves. President George W. Bush, the man who appointed the hapless Michael Brown, wants to investigate this personally.

No. That can’t be allowed.

If we really want to examine what happened and why, an independent commission of people from outside elected political circles should be appointed and given the time and money to get to the bottom of this and recommend solutions.

Four years after Sept. 11, with looming prospect of terrorists creating biological or nuclear horror in a major American city, government has shown itself incapable of planning for an even larger tragedy that most experts – including the president, vice president and secretary of defense – say is inevitable.