[in]competence, cronyism and conservatism: if Al-Qaeda had blown up a levees in New Orleans, they could have killed far more people than 9/11

Focus: The more you look the worse everything gets - Sunday Times - Times Online: "September 11, 2005 | Andrew Sullivan

Katrina has exposed the rotten state of government
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But he does put his finger on what you might call the three Cs dogging this administration in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: competence, cronyism and conservatism.
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Take the latest spin from the White House public relations operation, now in overdrive. The White House blames Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, for not specifically requesting federal troops to impose law and order (as opposed to search and rescue), and so clearing away legal hurdles for the federal government to help.
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Well, actually, at that point it was completely clear that the state authorities were overwhelmed and “lawlessness was the inevitable result”. Emergencies such as Katrina are precisely why the federal executive branch exists. It exists to take control and do things swiftly. Instead, the White House worried about gender politics and public relations while people drowned and corpses littered the streets of a city.

And Blanco’s defence? “I need everything you have got,” she said she told the president last Tuesday. Alas, she didn’t specify which type of soldier and for which purpose: “Nobody told me that I had to request that. I thought that I had requested everything they had.” If this weren’t a human catastrophe, it might be a comedy.
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Then there’s cronyism. We now all know that Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), had little or no experience of managing major emergencies. Neither had his deputy. Nor his predecessor, when appointed. But they were all Bush campaign operatives and cronies. The Senate approved his appointment after a 42-minute hearing.
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Last: conservatism. Some have argued this past week that the underlying problem is that America doesn’t have enough government spending or a big enough government. Given the explosion of spending under Bush — the biggest increase since Lyndon Johnson — this makes no sense at all. The US has spent billions on homeland security — and what we now know is that if Al-Qaeda had blown up a couple of levees in New Orleans, they could have killed far more people than they did on 9/11.