I with everyone who recognizes that there were appalling failures of local and state government to recognize and properly deal with the implications of the mostly immobile 130,000 or whatever the exact number was. BUT, I also know that IF there had been a serious attempt to mass evac the poor, elderly, and infirm in public buses AND if the storm had passed further away like many had in the past, then the recriminations would have been INTENSE: the Mayor would have been viciously accused of wasting lots of money and resources on a huge hassle program to drag a lot of good folks out of their homes and their city. Plus, one can be sure there would have been all sorts of SNAFUS with the transportation, shelters, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fervently of the belief that the Mayor and other public officials needed to say "we will use every possible publicly available vehicle to carry out this evacuation" (and they should have brought in hundreds more from other towns within a 2-3 hour radius). Still, it is worth recognizing that the Mayor and other officials would have been mercilessly slandered by all the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson types that exist all over our country if a mass bus evac had been carried out and then the storm veered farther away to east or west.....
I couldn't agree more with you regarding what the ramifications of an un-needed evacuation would have been.
Everyone speaks as if the folks in N.O. KNEW that the storm would hit them. They didn't know, and it didn't actually hit N.O. directly. Even with the disastrous flooding, it was gradual and the result of the levee failure. Imagine the repercussions if there had been a direct hit, a 25 foot storm surge directly onto the bowl of N.O.! It would make what actually did happen, as bad as it is, look like a cakewalk.
The bottom line to me is N.O. was a disaster waiting to happen. Pompeii on the bayou.
The odds have finally played out but it could have been much worse. The only solution would have been a real public awareness by the people of how vulnerable they were, and mandatory total evacuation any time a category 3 or higher seriously threatened the city. If this would have been one of many evacuations, it could have worked. But how many false alarms does it take for people to stop participating? Not many. How many collosal deluges will it take New Orleans to finally face reality? Hopefully only one.