Quote: answer me this: if everyone had done their job perfectly with the exception of nagin would NOLA be in the situation it is now?
Absolutely.
if everyone including the head honcho widely criticized FEMA for its failure to respond quickly enough to, and for its poor handling of this disaster then how can you say we'd be in the exact same position had they been prepared and responded appropriately?
Because, as I said, FEMA can't make water go away. FEMA can't make a levee not fail. FEMA can't put out fires. FEMA can't stop looters. FEMA didn't sit around with its' thumb up its' butt wondering about the liability implications of a mandatory evacuation delaying a decision by 24 hours and costing Lord knows how many lives. FEMA didn't want until 9pm the night before to execute contraflow plans on the freeways. FEMA did not and could not have had any bearing on those decisions.
Any difference in the position of the city right now would be very small. Physically it would be in exactly the same shape with the exception of perhaps a few less floating bodies if things had gone as intended.
The evacuation of people could have gone off better, but if one were assigning blame that would certainly be more heavily weighted towards Nagin and the Governor than anyone. Nagin should have gotten more out of the city before it even hit -- FEMA should have gotten more out more quickly after the fact. But it got handed quite the clusterf*ck from Nagin. It's one reason why federal agencies were so incredibly flabbergasted and lost on what to do -- the plans didn't call for so many people still being left in the city and they certainly didn't call for so much lawlessness that diverted a lot of resources to deal with. That was all supposed to have been taken care of. It's amazing that between that and the incompetence of their then leader they were able to do anything at all.
