Although one whould caution against jumping to conclusions before facts are established, tongues will nevertheless be wagging across the United States today in the face of this devastating Wall Street Journal ($) article that lists the incidents reflecting lack of organization and preparedness in the federal government’s response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, including the following:

The U.S. Army has a large facility, Fort Polk, in Leesville, La., about 270 miles northwest of New Orleans. Officials at Fort Polk, which has nearly 8,000 active-duty soldiers, said their contribution so far has consisted of a few dozen soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division manning purification equipment and driving half-ton trucks filled with supplies and equipment. The first contingent of soldiers didn’t receive orders until Saturday afternoon.

A spokeswoman at Fort Polk said she did not know why the base received its deployment orders so late in the game. “You’d have to ask the Pentagon,” she said. A senior Army official said the service was reluctant to commit the 4th brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Polk, because the unit, which numbers several thousand soldiers, is in the midst of preparing for an Afghanistan deployment in January.
Instead, the Pentagon chose to send upwards of 7,500 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas and the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., along with Marines from California and North Carolina. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division are able to deploy anywhere in the world in 18 hours. It took several days for them to arrive on the ground in Louisiana.

And you just knew that airport security had to have a hand in this mess, too:

Because of worries that terrorists could take advantage of such chaos, FEMA now must abide by post-9/11 security procedures, such as putting air marshals on flights. That meant stranded residents couldn’t be evacuated from the New Orleans airport until FEMA had rounded up dozens of Transportation Security Administration screeners and more than 50 federal air marshals. Inadequate power prevented officials from firing up X-ray machines and metal detectors until the government decided evacuees could be searched manually.

The article reports that even basic logistical support was unorganized:

In the hours before and after Katrina struck, there weren’t firm procedures in place for directing people and materials. Dan Wessel, owner of Cool Express Inc., a Blue River, Wis., transportation company that contracts with FEMA to move supplies, said he didn’t get a green light to send trucks to a staging area in Dallas until about 4 p.m. Monday, hours after Katrina made landfall. That was too late to meet a deadline of getting trucks to Dallas by noon Tuesday, he said.
Once the trucks arrived, drivers often found no National Guard troops, FEMA workers or other personnel on hand to help unload the water and ice, Mr. Wessel said. “I almost told the guys to leave, but people are wanting the water,” he said. “The drivers distributed it.”

There is much more, so read the entire article, as well as Joe Carter’s thoughtful piece on how America’s current leadership failed in preparing the local leadership necessary to address a disaster of this magnitude.
As noted in this earlier post, “they fiddle while Rome burns . . .” But kidding aside, the apparent failure of the Department of Homeland Security in its first big test in responding to a natural disaster is sure making the decision to create that agency as a massive reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Update: Given the extent of disingenuous statements made by governmental officials, Ellen Podgor in this White Collar Criminal Prof blog post asks the following question:

[O]ne has to wonder if this reaches a level of criminality. And if not, should it?

By the way, don’t miss watching this CNN/AOL video that exposes the contrary pre- and post-hurricane statements by Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown (he of Grilled by Koppel fame). Devastating is too mild a word to describe the piece.