Bush Rules the Winds and the Seas

[elph8]

Nobody could confuse me for a Bush fan, but I'm a little surprised by how many people here on LJ, and throughout the blogosphere, are trying to pin blame for Katrina's devastation on the current administration. It just seems like the inappropriate response to what's going on, and probably a tad myopic to boot.

Comments

Damn Right it's his fault

[fengi]

I realize it's hard to fathom just how grotesquely irresponsible this administration is, but it fucked up big time because they are bankrupting infrastructure for their own needs. This isn't some idle speculation - Bush adminstration policies had a documented link to the New Orleans disaster.

Check this out: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
>>>New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane...When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

...after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

...the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for...About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money...”