Wil's Rant

The investigations into the Katrina failures have begun and as expected the blaming has also begun. FEMA's Brown has started by pointing the finger at the mayor of New Orleans and the Governor. Suffice it to say that there was plenty of mistakes all around so rather than spend time and money laying blame why not simply try to address the failures so that they can be corrected. On that note it seems fitting to recognize that even after the experience of Katrina, there were plenty of mistakes made with Rita also.

Which leads to the New Orleans police dept. They are now starting to investigate the loss of 250 officers in the crises. No, not dead, they left. To be fair, it must be remembered that during something like Katrina, officers can hardly be blamed for leaving to help family or friends. A certain degree of sympathy is also due to those officers who left simply because they could no longer deal with what they were seeing. The fact that some of these guys might have left for this reason makes them human, not criminals. As many a soldier can attest, the only person who wouldn't be tasked to the limit of their sanity in such a situation is likely already crazy. This should be remembered during these trials and not make these cops the scapegoats. What this really shows is the fact that the ones who stayed are heroes and should be seen as such. Another victim of the disaster would have to be the police chief of New Orleans. He has been criticized heavily for the department and has now resigned. I don't know about the guys record, I do know that this man shouldn't bear the blame for a situation that even the federal experts seemed unable to handle.