If any of it is true, it is typical of every event I have ever been at where someone important arrives: presidents and TV crews automatically mean cleanups.

What strikes me most about this thread, as a foreigner, is the recurring astonishingly infantile belief that the President is somehow a godlike father figure who should be all-knowing, all-wise, and able to handle a vast natural disaster with a wave of his hand, that he is to blame for any and every flaw in the response, and the refusal to plan adequately for it beforehand, and when he isn't such a God, there is widespread anguish.   Bush is a complete idiot, but the crazed reaction is absurd.

yours,

Peter