Quote of the day:

Just heard from a Louisiana source in the medical industry that New Orleans hospitals were advised after 9/11 to move their generators from the first floor to the third floor -- presumably to protect them in case terrorists dynamited the levee. Obviously, they didn't do this, which is why the hospitals are evacuating now.

It's interesting to think about the massive recriminations that are going to take place in the aftermath of this storm. Not a single soul in Louisiana can say they didn't see this coming. Like everybody else in south Louisiana, I grew up hearing about the Big One that was going to hit New Orleans one day. There has been intense interest in this in recent years, with scientists at LSU and elsewhere warning precisely what was going to happen if a storm like Katrina hit the city. All of this was predicted ... but nobody made serious efforts to protect against it by strengthening the levees. That would have been difficult and expensive.

It is possible, of course, that nothing could have been done to have prevented this disaster. But the point is, we didn't really try. And now we have to pay an unimaginable price. This has got me thinking about terrorism too. One of these days, we're going to lose an American city to nuclear terrorism, and we will wail and gnash our teeth over what happened to us. NOW is the time to foresee this kind of thing, and to prepare for it as much as we can. I had in my office today an Israeli security consultant, who, talking about terrorism, said to me, "Americans are great in figuring out how to react to things after they happen. But you're not very good at preventing them from happening."

I quote from Rod Dreher of the National Review Online, discussing why New Orleans wasn't prepared, even though they saw The Big One coming for years and did nothing.