GUEST, I agree that Bush is to blame for drastically emasculating FEMA (although I didn't mention the part about the DHS, which was just one aspect of the agency's downfall).

All this hoo-hah about whether or not a "mandatory evecuation" should have been ordered, and when, is a lot of hot air. There is simply no way to make hundreds of thousands of private citizens pick up and move. No person, elected official or not, can wave a magic wand and cause hundreds of thousands of households to pick up and move on two or three days' notice. All a politician can hope to do by ordering a mandatory evacuation within whatever time frame some expert deems appropriate is simply to cover his ass.

If nothing else has become clear from the experience of Katrina and its aftermath, it's that there are serious limitations to what government and individual officeholders can do. Before a single government-sponsored rescue mission got started, individuals were out there in their boats saving their neighbors. And LONG before the bureaucrats and politicians can agree upon which planner to pay for a "master plan," individuals who have decided to reinhabit and/or rebuild their homes have, ipso facto, begun the decision-making process that is determining the future of each of their neighborhoods.

Aside from their function of disbursing funds (which has been less than equitable, or even rational), most of our politicians have been about as useful as tits on a bull. This may have been true all along, but it's become more evident than ever since we've been in true crisis mode.

Just as various officials on all levels deserve only limited credit for the positive aspects of the recovery, they don't really deserve so much blame for what happened. Believe me, I despise Bush about as much as anyone, and I do hold him responsible for the abysmally slow and inadequate federal response, but he didn't make the levees break and it's stupid to blame him for everything that happened.

Douglas Brinkley's book is probably the best summation of what happened in New Orleans during and after Katrina, and ought to be required reading for anyone who wants to pontificate on the subject. However, his reporting is definitely tainted by his intense personal dislike for Mayor Nagin, especially in the section excerpted in Vanity Fair, and even moreso in the brief passages lifted out of context from the magazine and published during the recent mayoral campaign. His venomous tone was so evident that he probably provoked a backlash, and may be responsible for gaining Nagin enough sympathy to get reelected, which will probably prove to have been an unfortunate deveopment...