The desperation given eloquent voice by Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans speaks to the ineffectual leadership in Washington. It's unfortunate that Nagin is not sitting in the White House rather than in a city in ruins.
Bush took advantage of 9/11 to rationalize his looting and conquest of Iraq. He led us into a pointless war against a country that had not attacked us, and has wasted billions of dollars and thousands of barrels of innocent blood to portray himself as a patriotic "wartime president" while pursuing imperialist objectives in the Middle East.
It was known and widely reported in the media in advance of Hurricane Katrina making landfall that an unprecedented national disaster was likely, yet thousands of indigent and sick people were left to fend for themselves. A training exercise called "Hurricane Pam" included a scenario similar to what now exists there, and yet the Department of Homeland Security was distracted and unprepared.
There can be no excuse for the disintegration of society that New Orleans is witnessing. If George Bush is not accountable for it, no one is. He can't pass the buck anymore.
Tom Rue
Monticello