New Orleans

[mburbank]

I've just spent the last hour reading accounts of the huge mob of people at the convention enter, who have no food or water or evac, where people are dying; and a lot of coverage about the hospitals falling apart. I've read about looters and gunplay and people shooting at helicopters, which I think pretty much defines madness in this situation.

What I'm about to ask is from a totally niave standpoint so any one with any actual knowledge should chime in...

I known there's fair amount of people and energy and money trying to help out down there, but... this is the biggest disaster of my lifetime. It makes 9/11 look small by comparison. Shouldn't we be pouring everything we have into this? I mean, I know martial law has been declared, but shouldn't huge amounts of our armed forces be there now, shouldn't we be airlifting out huge numbers of people instead of busing some of them to Texas? It just seems to me the national presence is floundering here, and it's still hurricane season. What if another storm hits?

This should be a major, national emergency and I don't mean to say it's being ignored, but is this the best we can do? haven't we been supposedly preparing for huge scale disasters for four years now?