Peter, I like to describe what BigWill is talking about by saying "we have a crisis of responsibility in this country." NOBODY seems willing to take responsibility for their actions.

Regarding that poor distraught heartbreaking man. I would ask that we all reserve judgment at this point. It seems that everybody involved is pointing the finger at everybody else (crisis of responsibility, perhaps?), and the fact is, we just don't know exactly what went on before, during, and since this awful tragedy.

The scary question is who, in heaven's name, are we going to get to figure it all out. I'd prefer it not be anyone from the the parties involved, i.e. local government, state government, federal government. Who else is left? I would also like to make it clear that my interest in finding out what happened, and what went wrong, is not so much in assessing blame, and meting out punishment, but rather in gaining the knowledge needed to avoid this ever happening again. IMHO, the "blame game" is counterproductive.

Returning to "responsibility," In all the interviews I've seen, there has been only one man accept responsibility for remaining in New Orleans when he should have left. JUST ONE, out of all those thousands of people who, tearfully, blamed himself for his misery. Everyone else I've seen blames anybody else.

I don't have a lot of respect for the Mayor of N.O. He seems to be the biggest finger pointer of all. He deserves credit for, before Katrina hit, making it all too clear that this was a hurricane of biblical proportions and that EVERYBODY should get out of the city. But since the tragedy, all he's done is blame everybody else. It remains to be seen if he is correct, and I am reserving final judgment. But, that behavior does not earn my respect.

Jack

"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue." - G. K. Chesterton