is bush at fault? Options

[*tweeak*]

to begin with, i'd like to point out that I do not support Bush. However, I cannot understand why people are blaming him for Katrina, just because he has troops in Iraq. It seems like a lame excuse to protest the war and find a scapegoat for the hurricane

so, do you think Bush is at fault for part of the Katrina ordeal?

[*mipadi*]

I came across a fairly interesting article that seems relevant:

"Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.

"'The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around,' said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at George Washington University.

"Computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other institutions made detailed projections of what would happen if water flowed over the levees protecting the city or if they failed." [1]

"But Louisiana State University engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on 'The Big One' examining what might happen if they did.

"It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week." [2]

A lot of the problems just seem to be more government bureaucracy. The article notes that FEMA has become so ineffectual because it is now a part of the Department of Homeland Security (the largest department in the US government), and is considered unimportant by many in DHS. (FEMA used to be an independent agency.)