[devane617]

My only question is what has happened in the DHS? We have spent BILLIONS and regardless of whose fault the response to Katrina was, it was a complete failure. WE are completely unprepared to handle a major crisis in a major city -- not to mention how we could handle a coordinated attack by terrorists in two or more cities. I wonder if the terrorists know just how vulnerable we are?

[Dane]

WE are completely unprepared to handle a major crisis in a major city --

New Orleans is not your run of the mill city. Just take a look at Rudy Guilaini's response and nagin's.

New Orleans has always been a cesspool of incompetance and corruption.

[holyscroller]

I just posted an article about Brown getting fired from his last job. It helps make sense of his incompetence in sending help sooner. It follows this post by a few. I'll ping you on it.

[WOSG]

"My only question is what has happened in the DHS? We have spent BILLIONS and regardless of whose fault the response to Katrina was, it was a complete failure."

NO IT WASNT. Coast Guard saved thousands of lives since monday. hundreds of thousands of people evacuated, millions of meals and other supplies. A HUGE effort for one of the largest disasters in history.

Governor Haley Barbour made an excellent point today. He was told before the storm that this would as bad as Camille. He said he told the authorities to get the word out that this will be as bad as Camille. Well, it turned out it was worse than Camille It has destroyed property across a swath of the gulf coast hundreds of miles long, with damage going 200 miles inland.

Gov Barbour said that without a doubt this was the largest natural disaster in our history. The scale of damage is not just unprecedented, it is unimaginable.

You cannot make the aftermath look pretty. You cannot get through this without hardship, privation, death and destruction.

Yet despite this, there has been a large and coordinated response that has been saving lives since the hurricane.
There has been no recriminations on the Mississippi side, because they are not interested in finger-pointing, they want to rebuild. In New Orleans, there is a toxic stew of irresponsibility and political finger-pointing attempting to deflect from local and state government getting overwhelmed and failing to lead.

[satan]

As I said when all this started, an Incident of National Significance will be declared and FEMA will save everybody.

Next we'll see a report telling us what a splendid job DHS and FEMA did, and other than a few minor glitches the National Response Plan rivals the Constitution in long-lasting content.

Washington DC is a love fest.