Leadership. UP and DOWN the line. Every elected offical failed. Every hired public safety figure failed. The people of the local area selected these authority figures, and didn't care if they could perform if called upon (look at Rudy G of New York...he was expected to deliver, and he did). This is not a unique situation. The city should have been able to run the emergency situation for about 48 hours, until state and fed folks arrived on the scene. And the city couldn't deliver. I'd say that martial law in NO ought to be a permanent case...they can't take care of themselves, then let the president select a governor general of the city to take charge. Replace the police department with military police and let them set young immature punks into place. Public safety on any given evening ought to be an absolute.
Excellent post. New Orleans is a unique place. Things get done by favors there. If you do something for me then I will do something for you. This happens on a grand scale in that city and is the way the city run. The city has hisorically been run like a fourth world country and the people who lived there were happy with that. When a crisis hits it becomes every person for themselves since there was never a government, other than on paper, anyway.
When I saw those submerged buses I also thought of Pearl Harbor...Anybody with common sense can see what happened here..yet the MSM rants about, "Bush did nothing"... Bush wasn't fast enough "...the "Poor" got screwed (class warfare)...the "Black Masses" were once again victimized by the "Evil Whites"(race warfare)
The press has a template that Bush must be portrayed as a dullard in any crisis..they did the same with 9-11... remember the Moore ticking clock crap? It's the same agenda.
http://www.lwrri.lsu.edu/1998_2002WEB/downloads/New%20Orleans.pdfwhole