I tend to agree with you.
Watching both Brown and Chertoff in the first few days after the hurricane and flood, I didn't get the sense that they had a handle on the vastness of the situation.
They were almost cheery in their assessments. If we face a major terrorist attack some day, let's hope we get somebody in there that can grasp how bad things can get.
That aside, IMHO, it was still Blanco that fouled up the rescue of those at the SuperDome and Convention Center. I don't think FEMA or Homeland Security should take the fall for that.
And somewhere along the line, somebody (and I haven't heard it done much) needs to bring in personal responsibility. True, some of those people were poor and didn't have rides, but many, many did have a way out of town before the storm and chose to ride it out.
We've all been watching helicopter shots of the 9th ward, underwater. I was amazed, when I saw this the first time, at the hundreds of cars that were sitting underwater in front of these poor people's homes.
The theory I've heard is that poor people didn't want to leave because they knew that their homes would be looted first.