I think a lot of people are vastly underestimating the complexity and the difficulty of the rescue/recovery/relief efforts going on New Orleans. I keep hearing unfavorable comparisons to other hurricane responses or to the Tsunami response. These are not comparable. This isn't even comparable to a future terrorist attack.

What is going on in New Orleans is not a standard hurricane response. In a standard hurricane, or with the Tsunami, buildings are destroyed... people are killed... but afterwards the ground is dry. People can move around, they aren't stranded where they took shelter. Relief trucks can roll in.

This is a unique situation. A major American city is under water and will stay that way for quite some time and there are scores of thousands of people stranded there. You can't simply roll in a convoy of relief supplies and tell everybody to come on down to the town square and pick some up.

To try and cram the relief efforts into the same box as standard hurricane relief is to simplify things far too much. New Orleans is a situation all its own. Recognize it for what it is.