If you haven't yet read Jim Rittenhouse's 8-part synthesis on the NOLA disaster...

[doc_strange]

You can start here.

Jim takes a lot (a lot) of information and pulls it together into a remarkably coherent discourse on the causes, time-lines, and fallout of the many factors that brought New Orleans to disaster. It started well before Katrina, and it's hardly done yet.

Seriously, give it a read. All 8 parts.

Comments

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Dude I'm late for work!

Seriously, I need my own place and an alarm clock.

[ivy]

Wow. Mind if I steal the link?

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Sure thing. Jim's done a huge job and deserves more readership.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I knew he had it in the works; the finished piece is staggeringly apt.

I said it in my own journal and I'll say it here: the current Bush administration needs to be impeached now for crimes committed against US citizens.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

I've read the first few parts, and I am underwhelmed. It's just a re-hash of the attempts to shift blame to the Bush administration, along with the stunning it's-the-fault-of-the-war-in-Iraq song that's being sung everywhere.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Well, read all the way through. He blames a lot of parties.

Also, do you actually hold the Bush administration blameless on this one?

I don't think there is much doubt that the administration ignored several of its own internal critical resources, including the Army Corps of Engineers. Whether they did so based on a clear resources calculation or some other basis isn't clear. What is also pretty clear is that FEMA, despite a powerful mandate, has utterly failed in its core mission, as has the "all hazards" approach of homeland security. Not that prevention was possible, but certainly preparation would have been.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Yes, because lynching a scapegoat is always the way to reform.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

I think it's way the heck too early to start handing out blame, because right now we're operating in the "fog of war," at least in my opinion. So his handing out blame, and attempting to push responsibilty upwards for everything that went wrong, is simply unjustified at this time.

For example, it's easy enough for me sitting here in Chicago to marvel at the sight of city buses, lined up neatly in their bus barns, underwater. Why weren't the buses out there getting residents of the city to safety? Did the mayor think he needed FEMA's permission to send his citizens to safety? But maybe there's a reason, and it's premature of me to make any judgement. And the same holds true up and down the line.

Personally, I think it will turn out to be what it always turns out to be: unless you practice, the first time through is a huge disaster. The military runs full-scale exercises with live ammo; Chicago doesn't run test evacuations of the city.

The race-baiting comments by anti-Bush forces make me sigh in despair — aren't there any adults in the Democratic party? Am I going to forced to vote Republican again?

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

I agree it's too early to assign blame, though clearly there are some dropped balls both locally and federally. I can't see how FEMA didn't blow it, however.

On the race-baiting - well, I suspect if there was any real disregard for the folks in NOLA, it was because of economics and not race, since many of those affected along the coastline where the storm center came through were really 'lower income' rather than any particular ethnic group. The adults in the Dem party are of course those you're not hearing since they're biding their time; or those you're hearing who are asking for answers to specific failings, rather than flailing around pointing fingers.