Random thoughts/retorts:

~ The famously-photographed flooded school buses were placed on relatively high ground, in an area that had never flooded previously. Local authorities honestly thought they'd be avalable if needed; they were wrong, of course, but understandably so. The degree of devastation resulting from Katrina was simply WAY beyond what most people forsaw, or could even imagine ~ private individuals as well as public officials. In that sense, almost everyone shares a (small) degree of blame. The real controversy lies in who is most seriously culpable for this fiasco.

~ Regardless of the various manoevers by Congresspersons of both parties in regard to DHS and FEMA, the executive branch (that is, the Bush administration) alone is clearly responsible for downsizing FEMA and turning it into a patronage mill. There was a Congressional investigation BEFORE Katrina into the exodus of professional personnel from the agency, and there is plenty of testimony on record that essential jobs were cut willy-nilly, and that unqualified and clueless individuals were placed in positions of authority, with a primary mission of implementing further cuts in personnel and activities, and of questioning and preventing longtime FEMA employees from performing tasks that had previously been considered their "duties". The phrase "politically connected neophytes" is a direct quote from a former high-level FEMA manager's testimony, someone who had resigned in protest of the administration's systematic disassembly of his agency.

~ FEMA's response to Hurricane Andrew may have been relatively inadequate in the view of some (especially, of course, to affected residents whose needs were not addressed as quickly as they should have been), but FEMA did a much better job in the wake of Andrew than what happened after Katrina. At the very least, they didn't need three or four days after massive distaster had already struck before even acknowledging that their services might be required.

~ Whatever the sins of the Morial mayoral administration (and there were many, I'm sure, although some of the charges may indeed be exaggerated by their many political enemies), NO local official had ANYTHING to do with Congress' annual refusal to fund requests for hurricane protection projects, nor with the many instances of slipshod design and construction on the levee system. Certainly, most of the individuals guilty of levee-related corruption and/or incompetance were residents of this area (some life-long Louisianans, but many others short-term residents temporarily stationed here) and therefore perhaps caught up in a culture of corruption and laxity. However, virtually all of them have been, by definition, FEDERAL employees and contractors, because the levee system is designed, built, maintained, and supervised by a Federal entity, the US Army Corps of Engineers. The fact that such federal personnel may have been living in the greater New Orleans area, or anywhere in Louisiana, does NOT mean that their shortcomings can be blamed upon local and state governments. It is the Federal system that failed; the Corps and its subcontractors are resonsible for years of prior shortcomings that led to the levee failures, and it is clearly the Bush administration that is primarily responsible for the disfunctional response after the levees had been breached.