In your opinion, has Katrina dwarfed the 2001 terror attacks?

[Writer]

As a national disaster?

[clark4me]

1. In a word

YES!!!!!!

[H5N1]

2. Big Time

[stillcool]

3. Already....

but when the whisper of the number of dead starts spreading i think its going to rock the world all over again.

[tocqueville]

4. absolutely

but it's not he scale of the disaster or its source that are important.

To the difference from 9/11 Katrina has shown America's internal weakness in a completely different way. OBL doesn't need any WMDs to hit the US, he just have to wait to the next major hurricane.

[chknltl]

5. Worse than 9-11 but not as devastating as....

...Bush becoming president

[JohnnyBoots]

10. Agreed n/t

[kdmorris]

6. Yes

More people have died (most likely). It's spread out of a larger area, even though the media only focuses on one city. In addition, there was warning and our government did nothing. In fact, Bush just sat there while people drowned.

Hmmm OK, that last part isn't any different from 9/11. Bush knew then and did nothing while people burned.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Definitely yes, if only by virtue of the sheer area involved!

People outside of New York City or DC were very little affected by 9/11. I even know two residents of Manhattan who said that they didn't know anyone who was killed in the WTC.

But this disaster is having a huge immediate effect on four states and ripple effects elsewhere.

[KT2000]

8. Without a doubt

this has wounded our image abroad and at home by exposing the truth. It is obvious to everyone that we are the so-called greatest only because of our weapons arsenal.

There is no pride from this and the only way to deal with it is to change. 9/11 did not ask us to think or change.

[girl gone mad]

9. It's just so much worse, on every level.

though it's difficult to compare degrees of human suffering, it isn't fair to compare the damage and loss of life on 9/11 to the loss of an entire city, 90000 square miles of the south, people dying not because rescuers couldn't get to them but because the government sat around and did nothing, rapes and murders, forced to stand around for days with no water, food, supplies.

[wellstone dem]

11. Yes, but

it's not a contest.

[Princess Turandot]

12. It's a matter of definition of disaster...

my answer is no, because 9/11 was a man-made event and an attack by foreigners. I also live in NYC. I didn't know anyone who was killed on 9-11 but that makes little difference to me.

More people may likely die as a result of Katrina and the mismanagement of reaction to it, but it started out as a natural disaster in an area where only the timing of the disaster was in question. It certainly is one of our greatest national embarassments and tragedies.

[Zensea]

13. I was thinking yes, but I'm not so sure

I think 9/11 got deeper into the psyche of the whole country in a different way than this has. It brought a new element into American's consciousness.
I don't think natural disaster and man-made neglect goes into people quite the same way.
It's a little hard to compare though & I would understand someone who thought it was bigger.

[bklyncowgirl]

14. The response to 9/11 was a source of national pride

The response to hurricane Katrina is a source of national shame.

The 9/11 attacks occurred in fully functioning cities with strong police and fire departments. Even when the towers collapsed taking large numbers of the city's emergency workers to their deaths, New York soldiered on. Except for the failure to mobilize the air force in order to shoot down the remaining hijacked planes, the federeal emergency response was immediate and powerful. Rudolph Guiliani became a hero for his coolness under fire that day but he had plenty of help.

Contrast this to the response to Hurricane Katrina where Mayor Nagin was force to face four days of rapidly rising flood waters, a crippled infrastructure and a demoralized police force and a federal response that was slow, incompetently managed and more concerned with political jockeying than saving lives.

Remember when Bush told us that "The grownups are back"?

[mtnsnake]

15. Both are terrible, but 9/11 changed the way we live forever.