"Sheer, Maddening Incompetence"

What foreign observers have witnessed from afar, with a combination of shock and awe: "sheer, maddening incompetence, from both the (notoriously corrupt) state authorities [in Louisiana and neighboring states] and from Washington." (Daily Mail)

In Italy, Corriere della Sera scolded the "world's greatest country," calling the United States "a land that can no longer get it together to work together."

"Superpower or Third World?" a headline in the Spanish daily Noticias de Álava declared, in response to Bush and his highest-level emergency-relief officials' inefficiency and seeming indifference to the plight of the tens of thousands who were left homeless or injured by Katrina.

"The scenes are reminiscent of a drought-stricken African state where starving refugees piteously cry for help," the British tabloid the Daily Mail stated, "yet this is a great city in the richest and most powerful nation on earth" in which "[b]odies lie where they drop ... marauding, armed gangs loot, rape and kill ... relief workers are shot at [and] people die for want of drinking water."

"The worst of the Third World," The Guardian echoed, had "come to the Big Easy."

Reporting for The Scotsman from New Orleans, Jacqui Goddard described a "plethora of grim tales of disaster," including one female hospital manager's decision to euthanize a 380-pound man who was stranded on an upper floor of her flooded building.

Katrina has put "America to the test," Le Figaro commentator Pierre Rousselin observed. He added, more matter-of-factly than optimistically, "Of course, America will bounce back."

"The devastation of New Orleans was perfectly predictable," columnist Margaret Wente wrote in Canada's Globe and Mail.

Why did federal authorities under Bush's command "seem to be so little prepared in the face of a hurricane, the strength of which was known 48 hours in advance?" Le Monde asked. "Why did the [Bush] administration fail its first great [national-]security test since the September 11, 2001, attacks?"

The answer, foreign news media did not hesitate to point out, even if Bush and his handlers would never allow a member of his government to admit it, is that, with "4,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard and no fewer than 12,000 guardsmen from neighboring Mississippi serving in Iraq" (The Scotsman), the Republican president's "ill-fated excursion into the Iraq debacle left his own country exposed." (Daily Mail)

With the National Guard's absence from the hurricane-prone region it is meant to serve, "[t]he words 'homeland security' now have a terribly hollow ring in the anarchic [disaster zone]." (The Guardian)

"Is it well-advised to spend hundreds of millions" -- make that billions -- "of dollars to make war in Iraq when America is incapable of protecting its own citizens?" a Le Monde editorial asked.

The Scotsman noted that even former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican ideologue Newt Gingrich, criticized Bush's response to Katrina. Gingrich "says the disaster 'puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years,'" the paper reported.

Now, after the hurricane, "it's a political storm that threatens to sweep over the United States," Le Figaro's Pierre Rousselin predicted. This new round of stormy weather will "test" George W. Bush and his ability to "mobilize all that's best about America," he added, noting that, this time, unlike after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush "doesn't have an enemy" to fall back on.

So far, dutifully following his public-relations handlers' lead, Bush has shown up twice in the storm-stricken zone for all-too-obvious "photo opportunities" and a "show of sympathy" designed to demonstrate that he cares about the region's injured and newly homeless. (Deccan Herald)

The Scotsman noted that even former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, "an influential conservative columnist" in the United States, had questioned Bush's post-Katrina behavior. "Does he know in his gut that the existence of looting, chaos and disease in a great American city, or cities, is a terrible blow that may have deep implications?" asked Noonan, a tireless apologist in the pages of the Wall Street Journal for the Republican administration's policies at home and abroad.

"Each catastrophe ... instantly expose[s] the society that it strikes, and Katrina is no exception to this rule," an editorial in France's Libération observed. "Nice and dry in his mountain range," the paper added, "[Osama bin] Laden must be dying of laughter [as] the American civil-security helicopters make like ducks along the Mississippi."

In an online readers' forum sponsored by Germany's Die Welt, some contributors opined that it was "anti-American" to suggest that New Orleans got what was coming to it with Katrina because the United States, under Bush, had stubbornly ignored global-warming trends (which have helped make some storms more severe) and had failed to properly prepare the low-lying coastal city for such a blow.

To criticize the United States when it's down "isn't anti-Americanism, it's reality," a Greenville, South Carolina-based German contributor named "fretwurst" wrote. "Many people [will] always believe the U.S. is a super-developed country. That's true for some small fields of research, but in everyday life, there are many here who are living in a dream world" -- the kind of out-of-touch-with-reality people, "fretwurst" hinted, who would unquestioningly support a president who appeared not to have made their safety a top priority.