Salt Lake Tribune: "Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA"

One thousand fully-trained firefighters have been gathered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Atlanta to... do public relations?

Apparently so. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the firefighters are spending their time drinking beer and sitting through eight-hour training sessions in order to better hand out FEMA's phone number to disaster victims far from the scene of destruction.

'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.

The kicker?

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.

A team of fifty firefighters, chomping at the bit to save lives, and the most important use the Bush administration has for them is to be a human backdrop for the president's photo op? That's getting mighty close to the most disgusting thing I've heard in a long time...