The streets were underwater, and in fairness, no one could know the scope of the disaster it has become; no one knew how many people stayed. The desperation and the widespread anarchy seems to have arisen within the last 24 hours.
They knew a category 5 storm was going to hit SOMEWHERE on the gulf coast. And that people would be cut off from basic needs like water. There are people dying of dehydration and exposure. Tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.
Oh, and since the invasion of Iraq and subsequent war were based or false and quite possibly flat out fraudulent information, and that war sucked funding from levy maintenance, yes, I do blame the White House for the scope of this.
In the almighty revenge on Saddam Hussein we've let Bin Laden go, turned Iraq into a hotbed of fundimentalists and terrorists, sent a bunch of weekend warriors to the front lines and extended their enlistments repeatedly, and now we're watching babies die of dehydration two miles from our last F2F.