New revelations on Hurricane Katrina

Salon has carried a story on the Bush Administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans in 2005 which suggests that what transpired was worse than incompetence, but straight out political manipulation of the situation.

The author, Paul Alexander, argues that Karl Rove was given responsibility for managing the Federal Administration's response, and that Federal aid to the stricken city - most notably 500 buses that the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) had promised to provide - was withheld in order that the Democrat Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, would be held responsible for inaction in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane.

For more, see here. It is an excerpt from a forthcoming book called "Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove," published by Modern Times.