Let The Finger Pointing Begin

FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the
three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New
Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left
millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to
thousands 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
the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. 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, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban
Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and
renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New
Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a
terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the
flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq
war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New
Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the
waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the
beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent
since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring
freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees,
but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a
series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater,
reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the
wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked
about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers
almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm
surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands
surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent
City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net
loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and
bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003,
unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental
Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands
unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups
conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands
protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a
Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a
policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the
report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental
Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted,
"Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President
Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection
Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting
its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy,"
and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report.
The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the
Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human
health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the
line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year,
Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists,
meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising
temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel
laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in
Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in
the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most
powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ...
Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and
administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The
administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle
.... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must
cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by
ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug
Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after
contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety
and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations
special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of
responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the
administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the
chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was
ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and
other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and
he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army
Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7
billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at
which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her
superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney
aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan
to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of
evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park
Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in
Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D.
Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to
the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own
"Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President
Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon
and the Guardian of London.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT- A bit of perspective on Katrina
    ... >> administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to ... >> Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has ... >> Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush ... >> administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)
  • Re: OT- A bit of perspective on Katrina
    ... > administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to ... > Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has ... > Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush ... > administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)
  • Re: "Katrina" aftermath
    ... After the Hurricane Katrina, ... > the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration ... > cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq ... > administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. ...
    (soc.culture.laos)
  • Re: "No One Can Say they Didnt See it Coming"
    ... > striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the ... > Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush ... > administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. ... > issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, ...
    (rec.music.country.western)
  • Re: What the world thinks about Katrina and Bush
    ... HURRICANE Katrina was a horrific natural disaster. ... President Bush would have run out of Crawford a lot quicker and FEMA ... editorial noted that most of the New Orleans victims were black, ... administration was incompetent, ...
    (alt.politics.bush)
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