You wrote:
"Five GE MK I reactors lost all forms of cooling for a period of many hours to days."

And you missed the second part "After experiencing a 9.0 earthquake, which scrammed the reactors, and then a 47' tsunami which destroyed the cooling systems."

And you missed the third part "Nobody was killed."

Everytime we have a 9.0 earthquake and a 40' foot Tsunami I expect to have deal with a lot of damage and loss of life and general scrambling around because so many things are put under strain at the same time.

You could look at this and say "How often do we have 9.0 earthquakes?" and you could see that over the last 112 years we've had six. You might ask about how many of those occurred where we might build a nuclear plant (2) and how many were accompanied by a tsunami on the same coast (1). And you might conclude that this is a pretty rare occurence, probability suggests that it is one you, your children (if you have any), and their children (if they have any) will never see again.

You also said "Most of this basic information was very well established and confirmed by multiple sources. Those of us who knew this was a huge disaster unfolding were not 'right by accident'."

The place where I and perhaps other disagree with you is when you use the phrase 'huge disaster' here. I've not checked all the comments but most people said early on that this was no doubt the worst possible accident these plants could experience, there were folks who expressed confidence in the layers of systems which are designed to keep such accidents from becoming 'disasters.' What wasn't clearly articulated I guess was the definition of disaster.

There are many square kilometers around Chernobyl which were rendered uninhabitable from that accident. In Fukushima's case nowhere will be rendered un-inhabitable. While there are people evacuated currently, those evacuations are temporary. In all likelyhood no one will have died or suffered permanent injury from the Fukushima accident (again due to a variety of safety systems). That wasn't the case in Chernobyl.

So an accident which doesn't harm human life, doesn't damage any property not belonging to the power company, and doesn't do any lasting or even long lived damage to the environment, does not rise to the level of 'huge disaster' in my opinion.

And looking back at some of those comments they acknowledge that the lack of data from the plants directly left only speculation as an option and they covered the scenario that TEPCO seems to have observed after regaining access to reactor #1's control room. That the engineering of the plants defensive systems, in the absence of the cooling system, the backup system, and the backup backup system, contained the accident's results to the pressure vessel and the containment structure. Water used in the response has collected in the concrete basements under the reactors. The longer lived radioactive by products of the fission process have (as far as anyone can tell) remained contained within the structures designed to contain them. The reactors themselves are a total loss and can probably not be economically be recovered so will no doubt be dismantled.

It is the worst possible accident you could have at the plant. As with a luxury car's crumple zones and air bags and other safety gear, the plants systems designed to contain and mitigate the accident have done their jobs. Protecting lives and property.

From the moment the wave washed over the plant everyone knew it was a serious accident, the only question has ever been what were the long term ramifications of that accident.

My guess is that the plan will involve dismantling reactor #4, using the building and space as a processing center to process recovered material from reactors 1, 2, and 3 separating out the long lived waste from the low energy / short lived waste. The low level waste will become non-waste on its own by alpha/beta decay and the remains of the fuel will be stored with other high level waste that the plants generate.

[1] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763403.html