The Hurricane's Katrina, the Disaster Is Bush

If you've uncovered enough internets rocks to stumble into this blog, you have to know enough to read Josh Marshall, too, but I have to point out that he's been simply nailing stuff in relation to the horrible way the U.S. wasn't prepared for Katrina. For example:

You can't watch that stuff and not know that this, in that corny phrase, was the big one. And even with the best preparation, with all the organizational pistons firing, there was going to be death and dislocation and property damage on a grand scale.

But how much might have been prevented? And how much more rapid might the rescue and recovery have been?

The flooding situation in New Orleans is at least somewhat unique in natural disaster terms, since there's at least a bit of an all or nothing quality to the situation. If the levees had never been breached, or if there'd been fewer breaches, a lot of that water just never would have gotten into the city. And then the situation would be radically different.

Go read that post, and everything he's put up so far--tales of cutting the money to keep the levees in shape, the movement to do in FEMA, the typical croneyism that the Bush White House does so well--and you'll get to be as angry as you are sad about the whole situation.