Mistakes....

are what you make when you spel things rong, or when you do a math problem.

They are not easily recognized when it comes to human behavior. What I may see as a mistake, you may see as an unfortunate incident or you may even disagree as to whether or not the actions taken were wrong.

But the commentors at PW have been requesting a list of mistakes made by FEMA in the rescue effort. Personally I don't think such a list is productive in any way, but I cannot listen to people singing the praises of an organization whose preformance in the face of this disaster has been mediocre.

Has it been mediocre? Really? Well I certainly hope that the most powerful nation in the world is better equipped to rescue and protect its citizens than what we have seen in the past week. I REALLY hope. A lot. I am not willing to accept that this is the best we can do, and so I have some criticsm.

But any criticism needs to have a purpose besides shifting the blame around, we need to use this information to make sure that future indicents are handled in a more effective manner than this one was. If placing blame were a solution to a problem then there would be far fewer problems in this world.

But none the less, here are some links to some shall we say "interesting choices" made by officials that I personally do not agree with.

Interesting FEMA Choices

Firefighters as PR machines (Washingon Post link, or Salt Lake Tribune)

Interesting local Choices:

Maybe they just needed a Map

Gosh I'm glad that I am not there:

First hand account of evacuation (via Echidne)

Live blogging from a doctor

Update: Interesting Choices in Handling the Media:

Scott McClellan (via Moon)

QandO re: DLC response


I would love to update this post with more stuff, but I have a job and junk, so I will do this as I find more links, or if my 2 readers send them to me.