Hurricane!

I think the problem with political criticisms of Hurricane Katrina response is that they lack objective measurements of success such as acceptable death toll or effectiveness of supply service contracts.

Because Katrina was unprecedented -- none of the disasters referenced resulted in so many thousands of people being displaced due to flooding -- the federal govenment's planning to deal with a situation like that was lacking. The job of FEMA and Homeland Security should be to prepare for the unprecedented and not just base its performance on past disasters.