Katrina comes home to roost
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1561246,00.html
President Bush is to blame for the scale of the disaster as a result of
his administration's policies and actions
Sidney Blumenthal
Friday September 2, 2005
The Guardian
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, the storm has left
millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter, and hundreds
reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New
Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought
by Hurricane Katrina may not entirely be the result of an act of
nature.
A year ago the US army corps of engineers proposed to study how New
Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush
administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a
flood killed six people in 1995, the Congress created the Southeast
Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Operated by the corps of
engineers, levees and pumping stations were strengthened and renovated.
In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New
Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters - after a
terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding
essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. By 2004, the
Bush administration cut the corps of engineers' request for holding
back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80%. By the
beginning of this year, the administration's additional cuts, reduced
by 44% since 2001, forced the corps to impose a hiring freeze. The
Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late.
Sidney Blumenthal
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