Katrina, Bush and New Orleans: America's Third World Crisis

One of the saddest things I've ever witnessed is to see my wife cry while watching the televised reports of the disaster worsening in New Orleans. It sickens me more than the bodies floating along the river, the looting, the dying among the sick and very young, and the total abandonment of the refugees at the Superdome because Americans should not have to watch helplessly while other Americans die. We watch with frustration and terrible pity as people cry out for salvation, as anger provoke a mob into a desperate search for food, escape, and vengeance. Why is this happening in America?

I have so many questions:

* If network reporters were able to station themselves in New Orleans prior to the storm, why couldn't FEMA and the military have done the same in preparation for the worst?
* FEMA Director Michael Brown told NBC Today this morning that they had not considered looting as a possible consequence of the flood. How could a highly trained disaster specialist not predict one of the basest of human emotions, desperation, during a time of anarchy?
* The FEMA Director also stated that they had poor communications on the ground to determine where the crises were occuring, such as the Convention Center. Couldn't he have just turned on the TV to CNN?
* Pres. Bush yesterday claimed that experts had not considered the levees to fail. And yet experts had been predicting for years that a Hurricane of Katrina's magnitutde would overwhelm them.
* As of Friday morning, why have the entire resources of the military not arrived at New Orleans? Don't we have a navy, air force, and army? Don't we have Marines who respond to crises around the world in a shorter amount of time?
* Why is Pres. Bush allowing thousands of Black Americans to die so horribly? Why is he so slow to react? I thought America was the most advanced civilization, the most honorable people, the most caring Republicans in the world? Why are we watching our most vulnerable people perish?
* And why has Fox News not said one critical word about the federal response to the disaster? All the other networks have asked why the world's most powerful man has not come to New Orlean's rescue. Not Fox News. They broadly praise the number of shelters helping the refugees. The quick Senate passing of a bill to help the relief effort. But not a single, critical word of Pres. Bush's ineffectiveness during the past four days to help the dying.

I don't have any answers. I'm not smart enough to have any. All I am is one person watching Americans fade into the chaos and hell that was once New Orleans.