What's Next, Mr. War President?
by Paul Craig Roberts
The raison d'etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East
in order to protect America from terrorism and to ensure America's oil
supply. On both counts the Bush administration has failed
catastrophically.
Bush's single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded
a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American
history. The U.S. has lost its largest and most strategic port and
thousands of lives, and 80 percent of one of America's most historic
cities is under water.
If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest
terrorist success in history.
Prior to 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New
Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the
Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to
protect the strategic port, the refineries, and the large population.
However, after 2003 the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war
in Iraq. During 2004 and 2005 the New Orleans Times-Picayune published
nine articles citing New Orleans' loss of hurricane protection to the
war in Iraq.
Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans
catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government
preferred war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home.
Bush's war left the Corps of Engineers only 20 percent of the funding to
protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18,
2004, the Corps' project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune:
"[T]he levees are sinking. If we don't get the money to raise them, we
can't stay ahead of the settlement."
Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the
Bush administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and
hurricane funding for New Orleans. The U.S. Senate, alarmed at the Bush
administration's insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006.
But now it is too late. Many multiples of the funding that would have
saved the city now have to be spent to rescue it.
Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush
administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not
serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to
devastated New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the
U.S. government in modern times. By the time the Bush administration
could organize any resources for New Orleans, many more people had died
and the city was in total chaos.
Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush's Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Thursday that the Bush administration
has done a "magnificent job."
The on-the-scene mayor of New Orleans sees it differently: "They're
feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are
dying."
"They're thinking small man, and this is a major, major deal."
It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New
Orleans. According to reports, 25 percent of our oil and gasoline comes
through the New Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission.
Needed goods cannot be imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an
already disastrous deficit in the balance of trade.
The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers' disposable
incomes, with dire effects on consumer spending. U.S. economic growth
will be siphoned off into higher energy costs. American lives far from
New Orleans will be adversely affected.
The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most
incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history.
Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower
hubris. The powerful U.S. military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or
control the road to the airport – and this against an insurgency based
in only 20 percent of the Iraqi population. Bush's pointless war has
left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government
abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.
The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has
squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run
through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's
reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and the destruction of
our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and
morality. And now Bush has lost America's largest port and 25 percent of
its oil supply. Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a
claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America's interests
to their insane agenda.
The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans,
Democrat and Republican alike. Now they must he held accountable. Bush
and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be
prosecuted.
What will it take for Americans to reestablish accountability in their
government? Bush has gotten away with lies and an illegal war of
aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi
civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture
centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.
What disaster will next spring from Bush's incompetence?
http://www.antiwar.com
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Just like 9-11, Bush just sat there and did nothing!
~Absolute power corrupts absolutely
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