Nagin's views raise eyebrows

As he returns to New Orleans today after a six-day junket in Cuba, Mayor Ray Nagin almost certainly will face questions about the latest addition to his collection of controversial comments.

Nagin told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he thinks Cuba's repressive regime does "a much better job" than U.S. officials of identifying citizen needs and deploying resources in the face of hurricanes, which routinely batter the Caribbean nation.

Though Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma all struck the island last year, only seven Cubans were killed, in part because authorities use soldiers to close highways and enforce evacuations.

Harking back to the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, the mayor told the AP's Havana correspondent that "one of the biggest weaknesses we had . . . (was that) it wasn't clear who was the top authority."

There's no such problem in Cuba, where Raul Castro and his brother, Fidel, have been the unquestioned commanders since 1959.

In Katrina, "The president and the governor were going back and forth. . . . In Cuba you don't have that problem," Nagin said. "The government says, 'This is what we're doing, these are the resources we are going to deploy,' and it pretty much happens."

Nagin also praised Cuban officials for "knowing their citizens at a very, very detailed level, block by block."

The statements drew swift criticism from New Orleans residents, academics and members of the Cuban exile community, all of whom zeroed in on a key distinction that Nagin glossed over.

"It's a police state -- let's be sure about that," said Lou Campomenosi, an adjunct professor in Tulane University's political science department who has studied hurricane preparation.

"They can make things happen. We don't have that capability, thank God," he said. "I'm just not willing to go down the communist road to make sure there is a 100 percent safety factor."...