Popular Mechanics Triumph

Instapundit points to a great article at the Popular Mechanics website that criticizes leaked excerpts from the report issued yesterday by the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. They demonstrate "the report's most troubling shortfall: consistently blaming individuals for failing to foresee circumstances that only became clear with the laser-sharp vision of hindsight."

They have a followup article here based on their examination of the full report. And (finally) their current cover story on Katrina myths and recommendations for the future is here. It's all good.

That said, many folks have unrealistic idealized notions of the infallibility and efficacy of government action. Any actual response will inevitably fall far short of what they imagine the government could be doing. So even if PM's recommendations were carried out in full, it still won't prevent future well-publicized outrage over the "inadequacy" of government disaster response.

And another thing: not to go all elitist or anything, but Popular Mechanics isn't the first publication to leap to one's mind when thinking of good, solid reporting and analysis like this. Why don't we see this sort of thing from more conventional journalistic sources? Oh, right, they're busy doing Cheney stuff.

It seems Reason used to do this kind of thing, but maybe that was back in the Poole/Postrel days …


Last Modified 2006-02-16 6:50 PM EDT