Picking Nits

By now, everyone has started to hear the rumblings of the MSM: The death toll may not be nearly as high as predicted. I know everyone joins me in hoping that this disaster turns out to be much less costly than anticipated, at least in terms of human lives lost.

But this will leave an interesting void for the media to fill. If this is the case, where to place blame, and for what? Katrina's costs will be mainly reduced to:

1. Property damage in the billions.

While the costs will be huge, no amount of preparation or emergency response could possibly have mitigated those costs.

2. The loss of lives among those who chose to ignore the mandatory evacuation order and stay in their homes.

It is difficult to imagine how any level of government can be held directly responsible for these losses. Perhaps officials could have issued the order sooner, or been more forceful in their requests, but the bottom line remains that their were other options available for these unlucky souls (even if some of these options turned out to be little better than risking staying at home, which brings us to number 3...)

3. The misery and death in the Super Dome and convention center.

Considering that state and local officials ignored their own evacuation protocols and herded these people into those hell holes instead of providing the means to evacuate, and then intentionally denied them food, water and sanitation (because they didn't want to "encourage" people to stay there), it is difficult to lay blame for these horrors anywhere other than at Blanco and Nagin's feet.

Help me here. What could FEMA have done different? What would have made a difference? This is not a defense of Brown, who displayed his incompetence on TV for all to see. I just want a specific example of what the federal government could have done different that would have saved lives.

Even more interesting. In what direction will the MSM vent their wrath? They smell blood, but it is difficult to imagine them turning on "folk hero" Nagin or the weepy and seemingly empathetic Blanco.

What happens next?