The mayor was supposed to have a command center. It didn't work because it lost power, including generators. I think that happened pretty early, as I recall him having to be called AT HOME on the Saturday night before the levees gave way. That, basically, left him without any control at all. Nagin has to take the blame for the lack of comm, because it was his responsibility. By the time the news got to him, he tried to defend himself by blaming others (Gov and Bush).
The Gov, IMO, would not have had the negative impact on the rescue effort, regardless of her confused political machinations, had the levees not ruptured. Had they not ruptured, the damage from the passed hurricane could have been addressed without much controversy, even if the Gov was an idiot (which she was).
Since no one knew the levees would break, IMO that takes away from the idea that the Gov and the Dems had a plan to trap Bush.
I actually had the same thought of your impeachment theory yesterday, pondered it some, and came to the conclusion that those folks were so far off base in their refusnik decisions, that to try to conjure up an impeachment from that would make them laughingstocks to the entire country.
It's not even an issue, IMO.
Just about all my info about NOLA has come from my reading here at FR, so I am deeply FReeped on the subject. Seems to me that the Gov is, or will be, defenseless whenever the investigation is conducted, which means W will come out, once again, shining. 8-)
Being saturated with FReep gives one a rosy outlook.
Oh, they knew the levees wouldn't hold. That's been known for decades, that they wouldn't hold in the scenario that was taking shape over the weekend before Katrina's landfall. Scientists knew it, and politicians knew it. The Dems knew that unless Katrina deviated from her track, those levees would break or be overflowed.
The plan was concocted during that weekend. At that time, Katrina was becoming a Cat 5 and New Orleans was in her cross-hairs. The impact of the storm, at that time, was feared to be even greater than it eventually was when she dropped to a 4 and sideswiped NOLA. Blanco knew big devastation was coming, because Bush told her so when he called her to evacuate. So the Dems knew, 36 to 48 hours before landfall, that things would probably be very bad, that this was the big one. And despite knowing this, nothing was done that you would expect to be done by a city with roughly two days of opportunity to do them. And nothing was done because they concocted the plan when they decided NOLA would probably be lost.
They knew very well the levees wouldn't hold in a Cat 4 or 5, because they didn't take care of the levees and diverted the funds to other things. The levees weren't designed to handle above Cat 3, anyway. With Katrina bearing down on them over the weekend, and knowing the levees wouldn't hold and that they had failed to improve or maintain them, they wrote off NOLA.
Two days before landfall was the proverbial moment of truth. It was the moment when they had to accept the probability NOLA would be lost, and when they had to choose either to follow their disaster plan or do nothing. When you're on a sinking ship, what do you do? Sit on your hands and do nothing, or try to save as many people as possible? They chose to do nothing, for the reasons I have outlined. I imagine no one was more surprised than they when NOLA appeared to have "dodged the bullet". But as we have seen, NOLA was grazed by the bullet and slowly bled to death, and the plan, already in motion, simply picked up where it had left off.