Iraq Is More Valuable than New Orleans

I received the following from a realloy reliable friend, but one who neglected to advise me of the original writer.  Still, it's pretty disturbing stuff.

Bush Traded New Orleans for Iraq

There was a federal project to urgently shore up failing levees in New Orleans and build pumping stations. President Bush diverted money for that project to Iraq. Do you think Iraq was worth seeing Americans become refugees in their own country?

The New Orleans Times-Picayune repeatedly brought up funding cuts for a federal project to shore up levees and build pumping stations in New Orleans, writes Will Bunch, a Pulitzer-winning journalist at the Philadelphia Daily News.

The risk of flooding and hurricane damage have been worrying local officials since the 1960's. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project [SELA] in 1995 and put the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge.

About $430 million in federal money has been spent since then, but $250 million worth of critical projects remained. In 2003, federal funding for the project started drying up, as the Bush administration started scraping money for Iraq and homeland security.

In early 2004, President Bush cut the project's funding by more than 80 percent, Mr. Bunch wrote, citing an article in New Orleans CityBusiness. In June 2004, Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi went to the East Jefferson Levee Authority, a local agency, and "begged for $2 million" the Bush administration did not want to pay for.

The levee -- the one that broke when Hurricane Katrina hit -- was sinking.

In October 2004, the Bush administration refused to pay the Army Corps of Engineers $15 million it needed to shore up the Lake Pontchartrain banks. And this year, the administration cut the funding by three-quarters, effectively freezing any new projects from starting.

And as the researchers called for a new study on protecting New Orleans from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, the Bush administration said no.

Mr. Naomi told The Times-Picayune in September 2004:

"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."

Do you think Iraq was worth seeing Americans become refugees in their own country?

Comments

[Miriam]

I understand that the process of shoring up the levees was a 30-year project. Do you think Bush could have finished it before his term was up?

[bbbustard]

Miriam - Thanks for your comments. Please accept my apologies for not responding sooner. I'm new at this. Maintaining the levees has been a federal responsibilty for decades. Bush failed to maintain them. He refused to fund the amount of money that the Army Corps of Engineers (which works for his branch of government)said was the minimum required to maintain the levees. Levees in a place like NOLA are never finished. They require constant maintenance. Because of the nature of the delta on which they sit, they sink constantly. He chose to give tax cuts to the wealthiest rather than maintain the levees.