http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561993,00.htmlHurricane Katrina has cruelly demonstrated the awesome power of nature and the havoc it can wreak on the proudest efforts of humankind. It has also exposed the United States government, and George Bush at the head of it, to charges of badly mishandling what looks like being one of the country's worst ever natural disasters. Unlike what happened after the September 11 terrorist attacks, partisan warfare has already broken out over the waterlogged catastrophe that is New Orleans and the battered coast of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. This is a crisis in full spate - as shown by shocking images of bodies floating in putrid water and desperate refugees scrabbling to catch supplies dropped by helicopter. America is the richest and most powerful country on earth. But its citizens, begging for food, water and help, are suffering agonies more familiar from Sudan and Niger. The worst of the third world has come to the Big Easy.