Well said, GB.

I'm taking the liberty of posting this for Gravity Boy because it deserves to be posted. It is a comment under this post - made earlier this evening.

If you want to really point the finger, then who in their right mind built New Orleans 10 feet below sea level and thought it was a good idea? God wasn't at fault here. This was all human error.

And nobody is blaming Bush, FEMA and the Army Core of Engineers for the hurricane. Obvioulsly it's not their fault. I'll even put aside reports from 2001 and later on the need for work on the levees. What is their fault is the slowness of the action taken and the way it was done. Let's do a quick recount of some things.

Bush made his first appearance on a national level 2 days after the hurricane hit - announcing that help will be comming. Remember, he waited 2 days.

Congress got together last night to pass that 10 billion dollar recovery package. More borrowed money. 3 days after.

Up until today people were starving and had no water, the hospitals wre still full of people putting their dead in stairwells, with more floating around in the basement(where the mourge was). And very few people had actually seen the relief workers. They said that they had heard they were comming, but still haven't seen them.

The trucks that showed up today with provisions have been waiting since monday for the go ahead from FEMA. they were finally told today to deliver the supplies. Why this wait when buses have been going in and out of the city for days? Who knows?

Bush finally made a trip to the region today, not actually going into New Orleans, hugging a few people for photos and making a very bad speech as usual(smiling at the most inappropriate times).

And, like everyone and their mother has said, we saw this coming. With the supposed super duper Homeland Security that was put into effect after 9/11, so that we could more readily respond to disasters, one would think long drawn out disorganized messes like this, with the pres and congress napping was in the past. And FEMA is now controlled by Homeland Security. So what gives?

Then, lets talk about all of those national guard personnell over there in Iraq. The National Guard has two obligations: to the state(for disasters) and Federal. They are typically, as I understsand, only supposed to serve 179 days for federal action(like war). But, since Bush and Rummy decided to make our military a more "efficient" killing machine, we are over streched in Iraq. Which means, our ntnl guard must fill in the gaps. Which also means we are left with less than adequate resources to respond in a disaster like this.

Plus, budgets have been cut all around - army core of engineers projects, FEMA, you name it. AND that guy Michael Brown - the head of FEMA - has no experience doing this sort of thing.

All of this is BAD. And there is plenty more. Plenty.