"But underneath this swamp of poisoned discourse lies a rational, clear binary statement: Either there has been a failure in out nations response to Hurricaine Katrina, or there has not been a failure.

I suggest that any rational person would agree that the above statement has to be evaluated in the afirmative case. "

Anyone with any sense, would know that there will be many failures involved with any large activity. The important aspect is to identify what when wrong, then the harder part is find solutions that if followed will result in fewer failures in the future- and if this is done poorly than these "solutions" could create more failures in the future instead of less.

"If this is a failure, then we have a rational choice that must be made: Are we to find out the details of the failure and hold those responsible accountable, or are we to ignore what went wrong and leave the failures in place."

You are equated failure with people by suggesting that holding people responsible is a solution, whereas it's more likely it's factors such as not having a system of communication which doesn't breakdown in a hurricane that would be example of a failure. Why wasn't this obvious problem addressed well before the Hurricane. Or why wasn't the Superdome well stocked with food and water if it was known to be used as an emergency shelter. These are things that should have been done, long before Katrina. At this moment I don't know enough details to the above examples, and that is the kind of reasons why you need a through review.

"So lets evaluate the claim that the administration is blameless in this, lets evaluate the claims made by Bush and Cheney (and McLelland, and Chertoff, Brown, Hastert and Lott) that FEMA is 'doing a great job'. And lets evaluate the claim that, where there is blame, the blame belongs elswhere (Bush blames the local authority, Brown blames the victims, Chertof blames the media... etc)."

The point is that the focus should be on solving the current situation, everyone who has a clue, knows this will be investigated, and once facts are better known, no doubt there will plenty of things to point fingers at.

"Lets start with 'ground zero' and move outward. Lets start with the Levee system, the system that has long been known to be inadequate, yet has never been upgraded or improved beyond where it sat in early sept 2005."
I believe this is a false statement.

"This was done at the federal level because, frankly put, NO is one of the poorest citries and LA is one of the poorest states. The argument goes that the NOLA ports and Canal System play a major role in our economy (as witnessed by 3.00 gas and the disrtuption to the transportation system!)- thus flooding and disruption in NOLA is an america issue, not a logcoal issue. Beyond which, NOLA could never come up with ~1 Billion US necessary to fix what is wrong."

This is just more bullshit, billions of dollars were spent and billions more were planned to be spent.
And this area is only area in US in which off shore oil reserves are being used, their many other areas in which oil and gas could be recovered but US laws forbid it. It should be pointed out that the systems designed to prevent any oil spills worked. So a major storm went through the most densely area of off shore oil platforms and there was no oil spills. Doesn't this provide evidence that we should allow other areas [beyond the horizon] to be used- and therefore stop importing so much oil? I mean the Califorina coast is unlikely to ever see such a storm, if the same measure are used in California, we can be fairly certain that large storms won't cause oil spills.