"What didn't go right?"

Before Katrina, the Republican theory received its most apposite formulation by a prominent lobbyist and close advisor to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, who said about government that he wanted to "drown it in the bathtub." In relation to the waters that surround it, New Orleans has been described as a bathtub, and it has served as the bathtub for Norquist's wish.

Sydney Blumenthal brings it all down over at Salon - well worth the ad, as well as having to skip some of his purple prose on the first page to get at the meat on the second.