Photo Op This, Mother Fucker

Photo Op President. At first glance, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with this picture. Except, the firemen were flown in from a brigade of 1,000 firefighters that have been holed up in Atlanta. Seems that FEMA felt it was more important for these firemen to be getting sensitivity training and to pass out leaflets in and around the Gulf Coast, instead of being flown into New Orleans to do rescue work.

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for ight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing ere?"

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community- relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters' vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.

"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

STAND BESIDE PRESIDENT BUSH ... MAKE HIM LOOK GOOD. That's all this president knows how to do. And the bastard has no clue that the fireman dislike what he has put them up to. They see through him, and this administration. They see that when people really need help, this president doesn't have a clue how to help. He only knows how to set up photo sessions that make him look like he's actually doing something.

Photo op this, mother fucker.