I really don't want to bury my head in the sand, but this coverage is overwhelming. I don't want to turn my TV on. The only thing I can think to do is to go in city block by city block with national guard and army troops and move everyone out forcibly. Calling them insurgents implies that they're fighting the US government, when in reality most of them are simply taking advantage of the preception of lack of law.

Getting into a psychological side for a moment. A lot of law enforcement is mental, if you do something you will be caught. That even if you don't see the law enforcement, it's still present. The reality is, most laws broken are not enforced nor can they or will they (ubiquitous tracking and cameras not withstanding). In NO, the mental preception of law has been ripped away. And you have enough of a subset of people who want to take advantage of the reality to either impose their will upon others, or to treat this as an 'end of the world' and that their actions have no consequences.

In order to get the mental preception back in place, a massive physical presence is going to be needed, as the reach of law in NO will now be limited to the places where law enforcement phsyically is. I don't know where the US can find the troops that will be needed (not police officers, they would get massacred if they went in right now), But they're going to need a ton of them just to regain control of the groups that are out of control.

As far as blaming the leaders. I won't give them a pass, because they are the ones who HAVE to make the tough choices. I know the Mayor of NO is never going to be the same (and you can say, at least he's alive), but he is going to live with the fact that he knows that he could have done more. Every one of those deaths are going to be on his mind, probably for every day of his life. Same thing with the Governor. I won't give them a pass, but I hope that I never ever find myself going through anything even remotely like what they must be going through and will go through.

As far as the relief effort. They're trying, they really are. Maybe the coordination isn't what it could be. But Honestly I think they are doing about the best they can do in an impossible situation. Sure some officals won't admit the truth, that the situation is out of their control and has been out of their control for a while. They have to recognize the situation and accept that things are out of control. Then work to regain control.

Maybe the priority is to find survivors. But... people 'rescued' are dying, Lawlessness is now an increasing threat to the remaining survivors. It is time for the priority to change slightly.

-Mark

My apologies for the rambling nature...