Typical Liberal Reaction....

I remember after the hurricane, that Bush was being blames for the levee breaches by a myriad of pundits and news organizations. I felt that that kind of reaction says a lot more about the pundits than it does about Bushes stewardship over the New Orleans levees. And on its face, its just silliness since the typical liberal's reaction is to blame Bush for everything.

As more level headed analysis is starting to show, the levee breaches were not caused by the little bit of dirt that Bush didn't put onto the levees in the past few years but 40 years of mistakes, failed management and the like.

The problem is symbolic of a broader issue that has undercut safety over the years, say the investigators: Safety is too easily compromised because no single agency is in charge.

"You have multiple agencies, some of which aren't on speaking terms with each other," says Raymond Seed, another Berkeley professor who heads the investigative team from the National Science Foundation.

Just as the gates at the mouths of the canals were opposed by local levee and pumping agencies, environmental groups in the 1980s derailed plans to erect a structure to block storm surges from Lake Pontchartrain. Engineers now say that undercut safety.

*Investigators found signs that poor maintenance of levees had compromised safety.

Bea says he believes large trees allowed to grow near levees may have contributed to the failures. Investigators say they also found leaks caused by portions of levees that had sunk and not been repaired.

If you have multiple levels of government working on problems and multiple agencies involved in different aspects of a project, you get a "dumbing" down that brings every level of management to the lowest common denominator. So, if that is the way that it is set up, expect failure as the result.

Additionally, pundits that like to blame Bush when it rains never give him credit when the sun is shining. So they completely lose their credibility since everyone knows that they are not approaching issues from a balanced perspective. Right Tom?