NYTimes is really covering the Washington news on Katrina

Rove organizes plan to reduce political damage

Bob Herbert - 'Bush to New Orleans - Drop Dead'


Frank Rich - We have to fight with the president we have

The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."

The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.

David Brooks demonstrating that he can sometimes be a smart conservative - "All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change... We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore." He even leads the column with a blog link.

Anne Rice - Do you know what it means to lose New Orleans?

Even more at the New York Times in the most emailed.

Added Kristof is back and talking about the Shame of Katrina - the hurricane of poverty.

and three important stories on the front page.