Take out your dictionaries, please. Now then, look up the word 'corruption'. Then proceed to look up the word 'conspiracy'. I trust you can figure out the difference between the two Bunnahabhain, since you won't have to travel too far between them.

I never said anything about conspiracies. There is no conspiracy here. We are seeing the first hand rsults of political corruption, graft, and cronyism from top to bottom.

And to try and claim there has been no mismanagment of this disaster at the federal level just beggars belief. I am stunned, once again.

Perhaps you could stand to read a bit more closely Guest, G--and perhaps develop that critical judgment faculty to read between the lines of official doctrine.

The emergency responder clusterfuck in due to the feds not getting into New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of the storm, and securing the locations with the largest populations: the Superdome, Convention Center, and downtown hotels. That was the responsibility of the managers at the federal level: FEMA has to approve anyone who goes into the disaster zones.

The Bush administration's justifications for the National Guard security failure is all spin, no substance. The Coast Guard was operating in the theatre. The local police were. The local fire departments were. The local paramedics and EMTs were. Actually, there had been an EMS convention in New Orleans over the weekend before the storm, and many of the first responders were stranded in New Orleans and set up triage in their hotels. The emergency medical volunteers at the area hospitals, the MASH at the airport, hotels, etc. were working practically round the clock with no relief.

There has been a road open and cleared of debris, allowing passage on the ground, in and out of New Orleans, since early Tuesday morning. Coast Guard, city and state helicopters have been taking off and landing without any problems since last Tuesday. Baton Rouge airport has remained open. Barksdale Air Base in northwestern LA was always functional after the storm. It easily could have become command central for the disaster relief efforts.

Barksdale is located just 18 miles east of the Texas border and 70 miles south of Arkansas--a short drive to any of several large cities. Barksdale AFB is 3 hours from Dallas, TX; 6 hours from New Orleans, La; 5 hours from Houston, TX and 3 hours from Little Rock, Arkansas. The base sits on Interstate 20, and Interstate 49 ends just 8 miles from the base.

It was FEMA's responsibility, under the aegis of the Dept of Homeland Security, to provide local and state emergency responders with the equipment they needed for this disaster. Guess who hasn't gotten their equipment from the feds yet?

The mismanagement blame can't be conveniently shifted to the local and state authorities, just because your boys are sitting there with egg all over their faces, and Bush is made a permanent lame duck because of his administration's ineptitude and incompetence.

I sincerely doubt this would be any better if Kerry were sitting in the White House, and Americans know that. So I'd be might careful about trashing those locals on the ground who have been doing all the emergency responder work on those 90,000+ square miles for the last week, if I were you. This is gonna blow up in the faces of ANYBODY who tries to make political hay out of it.

Americans are pissed, and have every right to be. We have been diverting our nation's resources to the so-called "war on terror" ever since 9/11. And the American taxpayer ain't to happy with the results this week of what the Bush administration has done to "keep us safe".