01st Sep 2005
No One ‘Anticipated’ the Levees Would Break?
I heard Bush say in an NPR sound bite that “no one anticipated” that the levees would break in New Orleans. (The only copy I can find on the web yet with minimal searching is on this blog.) [UPDATE: I had the quote slightly wrong. According to WaPo, he said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."]
WTF? As we all know, this administration is not big on “intelligence.” But I read about how vulnerable those levees were a few years ago in my friend Colin Woodard’s excellent book about what a disaster is our treatment of the planets waterways, Ocean’s End. I see the NY Times is also pointing out that the mismanagement and underfunding of Gulf Coast levees have long been a disputed issue, and that the Bush administration in particular has been an obstruction: “Since 2001, the Louisiana Congressional delegation had pushed for far more money for storm protection than the Bush administration has accepted.” He has some gall saying “no one” anticipate this. Evil jackass.
All in all, the federal government’s response to this whole situation has been positively Third World. It’s been nearly a week since the hurricane, and people in New Orleans have no food, water or electricity, dead bodies are floating all over, looting is rampant (I heard Wal-mart has been cleaned out of guns and ammo), and people are still trapped on their roofs, and we hear from the government that food, water and troups are “on the way.” Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that a substantial portion of our National Guard is fighting a foreign war.
I’m happy to see this NY Times editorial agree. Oh, this is good, too (via Frankenstein: “it’s the lord of the fucking flies”).
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Memo to the residents of New Orleans: if you’re wondering where the fucking National Guard is, they’ve been put in harms’ way on the other side of the fucking world in a fucking pointless quest to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, er, I mean, to bring fucking democracy to Iraq.