Supercane Rita is certain to do horrific damage to Texas. But, looking on the bright side, millions of humans evacuated in time and the post-hurricane politics can't possibly be as nasty and partisan as Katrina's were. Time , Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report mop up their Hurricane Katrina coverage this week, with U.S. News offering "Anatomy of a Disaster: 5 Days That Changed a Nation." It's a well-done hour-by-hour review of the meteorological and political events from early Saturday, Aug. 27, to nightfall at the Superdome on Wednesday, Aug. 31, when darkness settled over the suffering and violent crowd stuck in the Superdome. Both Newsweek and Time zero in on that $200 billion pile of federal loot President Bush has promised for rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The money -- $200,000 for each of the 1 million men, women and children in the region -- is flowing at $2 billion a day, according to Newsweek, and flowing at "almost $1 billion" a day, according to Time. Details, details. The point is, everyone from federal contractors to the guys who own their own backhoes are angling for some of that cash. Time calls it a "financial free-for-all." And, taking a curiously sympathetic White House point of view, it says that, no matter what the final bill is for taxpayers, the White House has learned that the "price of inaction is much, much higher." Newsweek's Howard Fineman is more accurate when he describes the president's FDR-like reconstruction plan as "an audacious, sketchy -- and, to some, dangerously expensive -- gumbo of government ideas." Fineman says Bush might pay a high cost for his generosity with federal relief money. It could divide his party, expand his already-unbalanced budget deficit and "swamp his second-term agenda -- including the creation of a benign Iraq." Speaking of Iraq, Time put it back on the cover this week, asking, "Is It Too Late to Win the War?" and providing a dispatch from ace war correspondent Michael Ware. Ware's piece, "Chasing the Ghosts," reports on a fierce battle between U.S. forces and a tough insurgent stronghold in the town of Tall 'Afar near the Syrian border. A massive assault involving 7,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and all kinds of tanks, artillery and planes, the battle was deemed a tactical success. But, combined with slipping public support for the war and hurricanes such as Katrina and Rita tearing up the country, Ware says the costly, bloody, "never-ending fight against a seemingly inexhaustible enemy" raises serious questions about the eventual success of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

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