Not a Fluke

That's the judgment of the president's commission studying the BP disaster of 2010. The commission says, "The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."

None of the major players - BP, Halliburton, Transocean - can feel that they were innocent. Nor can the Department of the Interior. They all screwed up. The important point - beyond making the residents of the Gulf reasonably whole - is whether it will happen again. Or, maybe the question is "when".