You might be an expert, but you have no frigging idea of what was done prior to the hurricane, what the warning time was, or a hell of a lot of other things.

Hurricane Katrina cracked Category 4 at 2:00 AM on Saturday, August the 28th. The earliest warning I've seen came on a weather blog, at 1:00 PM on Friday, the 26th. The term "days to prepare" seems very flexible, here.

The Army Corps of Engineers started ramping up on Friday, the 26th. A Federal state of emergency was declared on Saturday, the 27th. Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center called to urge an evacuation. So did Bush.

National Guard and military assets were prepositioned. Then they had to wait out the storm and the aftermath. Lt. Commander Kelly of the "Bataan" explains:

USNORTHCOM was prepositioned for response to the hurricane, but as per the National Response Plan, we support the lead federal agency in disaster relief — in this case, FEMA. The simple description of the process is the state requests federal assistance from FEMA which in turn may request assistance from the military upon approval by the president or Secretary of Defense. Having worked the hurricanes from last year as well as Dennis this year, we knew that FEMA would make requests of the military — primarily in the areas of transportation, communications, logistics, and medicine. Thus we began staging such assets and waited for the storm to hit.

The biggest hurdles to responding to the storm were the storm itself — couldn't begin really helping until it passed — and damage assessment — figuring out which roads were passable, where communications and power were out, etc. Military helos began damage assessment and SAR on Tuesday. Thus we had permission to operate as soon as it was possible. We even brought in night SAR helos to continue the mission on Tuesday night.

The President and Secretary of Defense did authorize us to act right away and are not to blame on this end. Yes, we have to wait for authorization, but it was given in a timely manner.

I've been trying to be quiet here. I posted a series of informative links, assuming people who wanted to really know what was going on from the sources would keep checking them. You obviously never did.

I've been tracking massive relief efforts that started Tuesday the 27th, and increased since then. You saw somebody on TV bitching into a microphone that they weren't getting supplies, and that was the Big Picture as far as you're concerned.

There has never been anything this big before in America. An area the size of Britain is wrecked, and on NO evidence, quantification, actual casualty count, or previous control to compare with, the rescue efforts are called "the worst in history." You can't make that call. Nobody can. There's nothing to compare it with. Are you aware of the other disaster areas FEMA was dealing with before this even came up?

I have been seething the whole week, while shit like this comes out of the New York Times, CNN, (even FOX!) and other places that should know better. I've had it, frankly. People like you are immune to facts, immune to numbers, and immune to anything that leads you away from your obsession. Go ahead and spout. I've put the data on the table all week. Take it or leave it.