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

[docstrange]

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]

Dude I'm late for work!

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

[thewronghands]

Wow. Mind if I steal the link?

[docstrange]

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

[rmjwell]

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]

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]

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]

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

[marsgov]

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