placing blame

Some people are suggesting that the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was the work of a vengeful god, angered by the homosexual decadence of New Orleans. More likely, however, it was the fault of an administration preoccupied with tax cuts and fighting foreign wars of choice. Here’s a clip from Editor and Publisher:

Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That’s because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city’s 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it’s level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet 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…

While we’re on the subject of Iraq, I think it’s worth mentioning that the President came out today and admitted that we weren’t in Iraq because of any immediate threat to America, or because of any tie to al Queda, or because of any WMD program, but because of oil. (That’s right, all those people who claimed as much, and were accused of being traitors because of it, were apparently right all along.) Here’s a quote from the Associated Press: “President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country’s vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.” That’s right, we’re in Iraq because, if we weren’t, the oil reserves, and the wealth that goes along with them, would fall into the hands of our enemies… So, instead of focusing on the long-term, and putting our efforts into renewable energy sources, we chose to send our young men and women to fight on behalf of our oil companies in Iraq.