I just spent 10 days working in a Red Cross shelter in Monroe, LA. Though the population of the shelter was small and shrinking quickly, I still finally got a hint of the size of this problem. Katrina/Rita meant the Red Cross provided over 22 million meals, gave over 3 million overnight stays in shelters, and mobilized over 180 thousand workers to rovide these and other services.
My point (and I do have one) is that this is one HUGE disaster. The crippling, be it never so temporary, of a city with over 800,000 residents was only part of a larger disruption extending from parts of coastal TX through coastal LA and MS, to coastal AL -- a lot of real estate and a whole lot of people.
Nobody is going to get this one right. The paradigm here is not brain surgery, it's the old aviation saying that good landing is one you walk away from (as opposed to one from which pieces of your burned corpse are carried).
I'm not disagreeing with anyone here, just venting and hoping to adumbrate. This is ajob which is worht doing badly and it's going to be done badly -- which is still way better than not doing it at all.
Bless you for your service to the unfortunate. I totally agree with you about the scope of this tragedy and your point that there couldn't have been a perfect response. However, the cold, hard facts won't stop the ignorant from searching for someone to blame their hardship on.