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"No one can say they didn't see it coming"

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.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Aug. 31, 2005 | 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."

salon.com

About the writer - 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.

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“For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind”

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Aug 29 | As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman’s strong statement affirming Bush’s CO2 promise former RNC Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.

Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist, was now representing the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would be friendly to their interests. His credentials ensured the new administration’s attention.

The document, titled “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2,” was addressed to Vice President Cheney, whose energy task force was then gearing up, and to several high-ranking officials with strong connections to energy and automotive concerns keenly interested in the carbon dioxide issue, including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, White House chief of staff Andy Card and legislative liaison Nick Calio. Barbour pointedly omitted the names of Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, both of whom were on record supporting CO2 caps. Barbour’s memo chided these administration insiders for trying to address global warming which Barbour dismissed as a radical fringe issue.

“A moment of truth is arriving,” Barbour wrote, “in the form of a decision whether this Administration’s policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore.” He derided the idea of regulating CO2 as “eco-extremism,” and chided them for allowing environmental concerns to “trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.”

The memo had impact. “It was terse and highly effective, written for people without much time by a person who controls the purse strings for the Republican Party,” said John Walke, a high-ranking air quality official in the Clinton administration.

On March 13, Bush reversed his previous position, announcing he would not back a CO2 restriction using the language and rationale provided by Barbour. Echoing Barbour’s memo, Bush said he opposed mandatory CO2 caps, due to “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge” about global climate change.

Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.

StopGlobalWarming.org

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New York Times Editorial
September 1, 2005

Waiting for a Leader

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

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Bush, Blame, and the Buck

by Beth Crawford

September 9 | Oh for the good old days of Monica Lewinsky when every Republican with vocal cords and every Democrat with "scruples" could cast pure and unadulterated (ha) blame on Bill Clinton. What a supreme Presidential scandal that blame-game created!

Just about everyone in America had a few salacious moments of interest; many reveled in every detail of the Clinton story. There was shock, ridicule, shame, and outrage. No one died from all this, of course, but the blame was laid on thick.

I must admit, I've never been much interested in a President's private life. I don't care what George Bush's dog is named or how many times Bush has fallen off of his bicycle.

What really interests me is his public life-- how he serves--and that word so commonly invoked during the last election: Security. As a campaigner and as a President, Bush has tried to equate himself with Security. Security has become his byword, his supposed signature quality.

Well, how secure do I feel right now? In case of a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions? In case of a terrorist attack? A nuclear disaster?

Not very.

President Bush has also portrayed himself as a man of action, a take-charge, John Wayne of a guy. He was the first President to order a pre-emptive attack--.to protect us. He has spent over 400 billion dollars in Iraq -- to protect us. He has spent over 2,000 American lives and untold numbers of Iraqi citizens' lives--to protect us.

So I've been led to have certain expectations of our President. He's in place to protect the United States and its people. After all, he has said many times he will do all in his power to fulfill that role.

And, indeed, this is a responsibility of any U.S. President. I believe Harry Truman said, "the buck stops here," not "Who? Me? The buck stops somewhere around here, maybe over there. Check out the mayor's office. Look in the Police Department."

If I am a U.S. Citizen trapped in the Superdome in New Orleans, U.S.A. with twenty-five thousand other Americans, if I am desecrated, with no water, with no formula for my baby, with no food for my children, do I expect that the mayor of the city will save me?

Do I think that the governor and the resources she commands can deal with the immensity of this catastrophe?

Do I think maybe the news correspondents gathered outside the Dome will whisk me away to safety?

Nope. I figure I can count on my President, our President, to rally every available resource to come to the aid of his countrymen.

As I watched for four days last week episode after episode of the appalling lack of response to the thousands trapped in the Superdome, I have never felt so powerless. Finally there were screams of "Help us" and these screams were loud. We all heard them.

Where was our President?

He'd act soon; I just knew he would. He had to. He was, after all, our commander in chief.

But George Bush did not act, and I watched and waited, just like millions upon millions of viewers throughout the world.

If I could have flown an airplane with supplies, if I knew someone in Washington...a higher up, If I were in the military, If I were in the National Guard, a director or a member of FEMA, maybe I might have been able to do something--if, that is, our President ordered me to do so. But he and his authority remained invisible.

Where was our President?

He must be figuring something out. Were we out of helicopters? Maybe the National Guard wasn't quite as large as I thought? Maybe everybody was over in Iraq?

None of this seemed reasonable.

So where was the President? After all, if those correspondents were right there in front of the Superdome ; surely some baby formula, perhaps a little bottled water could be dropped from a helicopter.

No American President would ever let any of his people die before his eyes and the eyes of the nation when they could be saved?

But President Bush did just that.

I don't need an independent commission or a Presidentially-appointed committee, a 2,000 page after-the-fact report , or a so-called blame game to tell me who was responsible for the Superdome debacle. Responsibility, the "buck" Truman was talking about, stops right in George Bush's lap, even if he is too blind, insensitive, and too ethically-challenged to acknowledge it.

What I also know and will never forget is this: men and women were dying over in Iraq to protect (supposedly) their country while members of their families were dying--unnecessarily-- at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana in The United States of America.

Beth Crawford is an independent writer from Columbia, South Carolina whose features have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Magazine, Southern Voices, and many other newspapers and magazines.

CommonDreams.org

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