Vast amounts of resources were already staged before Monday. The chopper ride from Baton Rouge is about 1 hour, from Jackson Mississippi around 2 hrs max, and from Shreveport a little over 2 hours...It is my opinion (to which I think I am entitled without derision) that the BS agrument about how difficult it is to mobilize doesn't hold water (sorry about the reference) in the 21st century. If that is the way relief efforts are to be expected to respond they are worthless. After the Mayor failed to properly implement the evacuation plan and implement it early enough, the basic problem was the miserable failure of the LA governor to properly deploy and yes pre-deploy the LANG with the dual mission of security and relief and to execute quickly behind Katrina. (I don't relieve the LANG leadership either) Second major failure was The same incompetent Governor failing to request federal help when it became immediately apparent it was needed. Third comes the inadequate early response by FEMA and federal deployment of major military resources by the President. But to propose that the military (NG and Active) and FEMA moved as quickly as they could given the technology available to them and that Bush focused like a laser as early as he should have is just not right in my opinion. This is obviously a debate that will not go away and the facts are the facts. Believe what you want. I chose to believe we could have executed better. I think even I could have and I am sure if the problem were posed to the family of Freepers before not after the fact we all would have demanded faster movement on the spot. Now that the blame game has started positions have to be taken and protected. We will see. Meanwhile the suffering continues.
Bush declared the affected states disaster areas before the storm even hit and he also mobilized FEMA.
The Louisiana state government and New Orleans city government are culpable in the response problems. It appears they did very little but tell people to "get out." They did not provide any support for those who were clearly unable to get out. They should have had buses at the Superdome before the storm hit and started moving the infirm and the poor to safety.
Hurricanes are not a novelty to the Gulf states. Each state is supposed to have its own emergency response plan for situations just like this. We have always known that a Category 4 or 5 was a distinct possibility and that such a storm would be disastrous, particularly if it hit a major city.
I'm not surprised that the liberal whiners are pointing their fingers at Bush, but they ought to be looking more closely at what the local government in Louisiana did NOT do prior to the storm's landfall. They had ample time to do a better job in preparing than they did.