But before the 1,115-foot-long ship with the big blue whale on funnel has even undergone testing, some experts are questioning whether it can fulfill those lofty expectations.

"I don't think the concept is that bad, but I don't see how in this situation it’s going to be a significant player," said Dennis Bryant, a former Coast Guard officer who worked on implementing regulations required by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 before retiring and starting a maritime consulting business in Gainesville, Fla.

"In a case like the Exxon Valdez spill, where you had a lot of oil on the surface in a confined area, a vessel like this could have gone in and sucked up a whole lot," he said. "But in the Gulf, where the oil is pretty well dispersed over a vast area, I don’t see how it’s going to make a large dent."

Whether the A Whale, a Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship, will even join the cleanup is unclear. TMT converted the oil/bulk ore carrier at a Portuguese shipyard over 10 days in early June without first obtaining a commitment from BP, which would need to sign the contract to enlist the ship in the spill response. Nor did it check with the U.S. government to ensure that the skimming operation would meet U.S. environmental and maritime standards.

Also, while the company says it conducted a successful test of the A Whale's ability to draw in oily water using fire foam, the concept has not undergone outside review. And Bob Grantham, a spokesman for the TMT Offshore Group, said Thursday that it's not yet clear how much oil can be removed from the water.

"Until we test the vessel in the oil spill environment, it is impossible to predict precisely how well it will perform," he said in a written response to questions from msnbc.com.

A Serious P L E A D! ALL that will please call or email Congress and demand more to be done in the Gulf OIL Spill! There is a HUGE Ship the A Whale just sitting on the coast that can suck up so much OIL and The Obama Admin and Congress are killing valuable time on STUPID Red Tape.Turn everything loose on this SPILL!

http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

I have made 4 calls already today!

The biggest — the biggest negative impact for us has been the news coverage. There has been no distinction between Grand Isle and Venice and the places in Louisiana that we feel so terrible for that have had oil washing up on them. But the average viewer to this show thinks that the whole coast from Florida to Texas is ankle-deep in oil.

And of course, it's very, very bad for our tourist season. That's the real economic damage. Our first closure of fisheries in Mississippi waters came just earlier this week after about 45 days.

So it may be hard for the viewer to understand, but the worst thing for us has been how our tourist season has been hurt by the mis-perception of what's going on down here. The Missippi gulf coast is beautiful. As I tell people, the coast is clear, come on down.

Mississippi had largely escaped the onslaught of the Deepwater Horizon oil slick, even as shoreline in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida was washed by both thick gooey crude or thousands of tar balls.

But on Sunday, that respite ended.

"The amount of oil moving into Mississippi waters has greatly increased in the last several days, and the prevailing winds that cause the oil and its residue to move in our direction are predicted to continue, at least until the middle of the week,” Gov. Haley Barbour said in a statement. “We continue to press the federal Unified Command and BP to increase the amount of resources available to attack the oil beginning as far south as possible, through the passes, into the sound, and in the mouths of the bays"

Barbour, who once confidently predicted that the oil would skirt Mississippi, rushed back to the state on Friday from a fundraising tour he was making on behalf of Republican candidates. Sunday said the state was prepared to move alone if the federal government couldn't provide more resources.

We would give anything if a prayer or an advertisement could make this all go away.

But neither media bashing nor media buys will stop the oil or preserve our way of life.

That requires the unrelenting attention of everyone connected to mitigating this catastrophe, including all the governors of the Gulf region.

What happened offshore at the 30-mile and 10-mile lines of defense? What happened to the assurances that oil would be spotted and stopped long before it threatened either the Sound or the sand? [See the FOX News interview linked above for a version of Haley's hot air over this.]

And why, with more than two months to gear-up for this possibility, were officials still scrambling for gear at the last minute?

Why did it take such a crude awakening to shatter the daydreams of Gov. Haley Barbour and others entrusted with the safety of South Mississippi?

Perhaps if he had gone to that “photo-op” with the president and other Gulf governors in Louisiana weeks ago Barbour would have developed a greater sense of the peril and addressed it with more urgency and vigor.

With the smallest coastline on the Gulf, Mississippi’s ecology should have been the most defensible.

Yet an underestimation of the potential threat, particularly by Barbour, has left us more vulnerable.

Barbour’s focus has been more limited: he has spent much of his time being an advocate for the state’s tourism industry — and for the oil industry which threatens it. And, of course, he has been playing a very active role in Republican politics.

This is not to begrudge the governor his standing in the GOP. His political connections and how they might help Mississippi was one of the factors in his favor that twice won him this newspaper’s endorsement. However, his travels to distant places and engagement in political fundraising during these days of crisis on the Coast are questionable, even troubling. Barbour’s priority ought to be with his constituents in Mississippi.

No small part of Barbour’s responsibility is securing and sharing accurate and trustworthy information about all aspects of the oil spill and its threat to Mississippi. From BP’s inexcusable inaccuracy about the size of the spill to the hidden-from-view cleanup efforts for the last two weeks on Petit Bois Island, facts have been too hard to come by.

For those who have paid attention to Mississippi’s official response to the oil spill, it is clear that the governor set the tone that has permeated every pronouncement by those in authority, particularly Dr. Bill Walker, director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources. Both Barbour and Walker have taken the media to task for doing its job, probably not the most effective use of their time and talents.

The frantic scramble for resources to defend the Coast this weekend is evidence of the too-little-too-late approach to this crisis.

BLOCK: Governor Barbour, I'd like to talk to you a bit about your own response to the oil spill because you have been criticized for seeming to minimize how bad the problem is. You've accused the media of exaggerating how much oil is on the beaches and you've been urging tourists to come down. You said the coast is clear. The coast is no longer clear, I guess.

Gov. BARBOUR: Well, the people on the beach today in Mississippi and almost all the tourist areas, there hadn't been one drop of oil. We've had a small amount of oil. What we've tried to do is tell the public the truth. And the truth is that the national news media, particularly television, has given people the impression that the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast was ankle deep in oil.

The news media coverage did not differentiate from what was happening in Louisiana and what was not happening in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida. Even the president of the United States came down here and said exactly what I said. You know, the coast is beautiful, the beaches are pristine, the water is clear as a bell. And people shouldn't be canceling their vacations.

Yet because of the news coverage, millions, billions, perhaps, of dollars were lost by people in the tourism industry in my state, Alabama and Florida. That's not to minimize the size of this catastrophe, but it is to simply tell the truth.

BLOCK: Governor Barbour, I wonder if that's a fine line to walk. On the one hand you're worried about not having enough skimmers. You're worried about what might hit the beaches. At the same time, you're saying, come on down, the water's fine.

Gov. BARBOUR: Well, ma'am, it's not a fine line to walk. All you got to do is tell the truth. Just lay the facts out for people and people can make their own decision.

Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team workers scoured the beaches in Harrison County [Mississippi], scooping more than a ton of contaminated sand mixed with tar patties, mats and balls into clear-plastic garbage bags.

Tar balls are weathered oil; patties are just like balls, but newer and with a more liquid consistency. Tar mats can be a combination of the two mixed with debris such as sediment or plant matter.

The state departments of Marine Resources, Environmental Quality and Health extended the beach advisory in Harrison County from the Gulfport Small Craft Harbor east to Azalea Avenue in Biloxi.

According to a jointly issued news release, the beach in this area had significant amounts of tar mats and tar patties. The heaviest concentrations were between White Avenue in Biloxi and Cowan Road in Gulfport.

Well, look, in every part of the government there is a role for good regulation that is properly done. But the idea that more regulation is necessarily better, I think a very suspect idea. In the case of this well, I believe it will be shown that if the regular protocols had been followed, that this well wouldn't have blown out. We'll see what the facts are.

But I am comfortable that's what the facts are going to be. And that if there had been somebody from MMS on the well to make sure they had done it, well, maybe that wouldve made a difference. But I think right now every oil company in the world says, I don't want to pay $100 million a day to cut corners on drilling a well. And that's where I believe the market system works. Nobody's got more to lose in this deal than BP.

The struggle to secure the release of the captive soldier has turned into a soap opera. There is his brother falling in love with a young woman in the protest tent, there is Tami Arad in a sweet photograph with her daughter on the cover of the newspaper, there are the noble parents and the impressive grandfather marching together, and there is the question posed to the prime minister: What would have happened had it been your son? With such opening credits, it is easy to mobilize support - as though if Shalit had had grumbling parents and a screeching grandfather, from Mitzpeh Ramon rather than Mitzpeh Hila, their fate would be less cruel.

Participants in the protest are careful to claim that it is "not political," as though a "political struggle" were a dirty word for forbidden and degrading activity, of the kind that would mar and stain the picture. That is an extremely childish kind of discourse. Shalit's fate arouses understandable emotions: Every parent thinks of his own son. But when the discourse is confined to the emotional realm, the real questions are blurred and swept under the rug beneath which we love to hide everything.

It is not only a question of the price we are being asked to pay for Shalit's release - and permit us to guess that some of the marchers will protest against it when the time comes. It is also a question of the next Gilad Shalits. If very few people are speaking honestly about the prisoner exchange, nobody at all is speaking about the more important question, of what Israel is doing to prevent more unnecessary victims like Gilad. That is political. But the answer can only be found in the political arena. There is no other option. [my emphasis]