Well, It Is Official: The Hurricane Was Bush's Fault

Well, George and I are leaving Crawford today. George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego , so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused.

The words of Cindy Sheehan, America's newest and best military advisor, have brought the truth to light. George Bush's environmental policies are purely responsable for Katrina ripping through the southeast and breaking the levies in New Orleans, causing massive flooding. The war in Iraq, or rather Bush's "killing policies" in general also lent strength to the 175 mph sustained winds. Had the 1900+ American casualties in Iraq not taken place, the heat from their bodies would have offset the fronts swirling in the tropical storm, never allowing Katrina to reach hurricane status.

I expected this disaster would be Bush's fault, I just hadn't expected the first accusation I'd read about it to come from Cindy Sheehan. I suppose I should have expected it, though.

You just didn't look hard enough for a story to read.

Germany's Environment Minister beat her by a full day.

"The Bush government rejects international climate protection goals by insisting that imposing them would negatively impact the American economy. The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies."

service.spiegel.de...

It's amazing that Bush so severly changed America's environmental policies since being in office to the point where he's creating hurricanes of such a large magnitude. The rest of the world doesn't produce any polution at all; why is America so backwards as to have industry?

We should be more like Germany and run all of our industry on spring water and roses

Yeah, it's all pretty funny, isn't it?

Just so you guys know, it wasn't the actual hurricane that did the worst damage, but the failure of the levees. Do you even know what happened in New Orleans? Read about how Bush took away the funding for their repair of exactly those levees to go into his 'killing' policies, AKA the Iraq war.

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.
...
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 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 the Corps of Engineers' request for holding back the waters of New Orleans' 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 Corps to impose a hiring freeze.

Source

Nobody's blaming Bush for the hurricane. (What a surprise - another sensationalistic thread title!) But had those levees been fixed, had he (and the administration) given one crap about the homeland instead of running after the oil on the other side of the world, had our National Guard not been off fighting a worthless and useless war elsewhere, many of the lives lost in this disaster wouldn't have been.

No one's saying the hurricane was Bush's fault? Was it his environmental policies that caused the levies to break?

By the way, I do have an idea of what's going on down there. I have family down there. One member's coming to live up at my house because her place was destroyed, the other two families we haven't heard from yet. Believe you me, I'm following this very closely.

Actually, there have already been a fair amount of people laying the blame at Bush's feet. There are links for two of them in this thread already.

And from the way your post reads, you are one of them.

Just so you guys know, it wasn't the actual hurricane that did the worst damage, but the failure of the levees. Do you even know what happened in New Orleans? Read about how Bush took away the funding for their repair of exactly those levees to go into his 'killing' policies, AKA the Iraq war.

Never thought the hurricane was funny, but I did find the rush to place blame quite typical of humans.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
In 2004, the Bush administration cut the Corps of Engineers' request for holding back the waters of New Orleans' 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 Corps to impose a hiring freeze.
Source

Rolling eyeballs, and insulting one another isn't going to make the facts disappear.. They are what they are as a result of one man's decision.
Whether he be a dem or rep, and it just so happens he's a rep. Can I remind people that errors in judgement are made all the time, including our political leaders.

I remember in my 7th grade geography class, and this was in canada, that new orlean's is a prime target for a hurricane catastrophe. And i'm not going to get into why as it's totally obvious, but i'm just going to say that if a 7th grader was confronted with the decision to cut or fund in this area, their education and knowledge of the subject would most likely lead them to 'fund'

Originally posted by junglejake
It's amazing that Bush so severly changed America's environmental policies. ...

You slammed Sheehan ( it's ok, I still get the GOP talking point hot topic emails too!) and offer the "it was bad before we got it" tread worn Bush defense!

I'll get to the repeal of pollution legislation in a second, but chew on this first:

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.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "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."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. 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, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."



The rest: "Did the New Orleans Catstrophe have to happen?"

Now, what do you think would have been cheaper: the ounce of prevention or the POUND of cure?


The classic Boy King response ( an interview with Diane Sawyer ""I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded. And now we are having to deal with it and will."

The GALL!!!!

Last year the question was to reinforce the levies. A report came out that they were weakening, but the priority was put on a back burner and there wasn't, as BH pointed out, funding given to do so. Were they to be reinforced beforehand, would they have been able to take the brunt of Katrina? We'll never know, we don't even know just how extensive the damage is today except that one of the breaches is over 500 feet wide.

If they were being reinforced, too, what would the result have been if construction was still underway today?

It was definately a bad decision not to reinforce the levies last year, but this kind of rampant destruction was not expected. The levies were designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane. Even if they were reinforced, they very well could have been breached in the wake of Katrina anyway.

EDIT: "You slammed Sheehan" Darn tootin' I did!
"and offer the "it was bad before we got it" tread worn Bush defense!" Ahh, so in the 6 years Bush has been president we've done so much damage to the environment as to cause that wonderfully scientificly accurate flic, "The Day After Tomorrow" to begin taking place? Here I though polution was bad during the Industrial Revolution, but that's nothing compared to today!

[edit on 9-1-2005 by junglejake]

Originally posted by junglejake
Last year the question was to reinforce the levies. A report came out that they were weakening, but the priority was put on a back burner.
would they have been able to take the brunt of Katrina? We'll never know, we don't even know just how extensive the damage is today except that one of the breaches is over 500 feet wide.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday night blasted what he called a lack of coordination in relief efforts for setting behind the city's recovery.



"There is way too many fricking ... cooks in the kitchen," Nagin said in a phone interview with WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, fuming over what he said were scuttled plans to plug a 200-yard breach near the 17th Street Canal, allowing Lake Pontchartrain to spill into the central business district. An earlier breach occurred along the Industrial Canal in the city's Lower 9th Ward.

Interesting pieces of news to me:

The earliest levees were erected soon after the city's founding in 1718; the system has been expanded and strengthened ever since.

"This levee system is to levees around the world the way that the Great Wall of China is to walls around the world," Tulane University environmental expert Oliver Houck said in a 2002 documentary about New Orleans' vulnerability to hurricanes.


Repeatedly, almost miraculously, the city escaped major damage in the past century as hurricane after hurricane wreaked havoc elsewhere along the Gulf Coast.

But as a consequence of hurricane Betsy in 1965 -- the last major hurricane to strike close to New Orleans, the levees encircling the city and outlying parishes were raised to heights up to seven metres.

Nonetheless, experts repeatedly cautioned that the protective system was unlikely to prevail if a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane like Katrina hit the city.

Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden of Louisiana State University was among those issuing dire predictions as Katrina approached, warnings that were grimly accurate.

"We're talking about an incredible environmental disaster," van Heerden said before the storm arrived. He predicted floodwaters would overcome the levee system, fill the low-lying areas and then remain trapped there well after the storm passed, creating a giant pool contaminated with debris, sewage and other hazardous materials.
LFP article



Indeed, too many frikkin cooks in the kitchen...

I thought scientists were around for good reasons? Is a US president more knowledgeable on this subject then someone who has been studying it for years?! Is it not the president's responibility and duty to take matters seriously, and make good sound decisions for the people that elect him?
I thought he was all about making sure the people in this country people stayed safe?!

You don't take money away and ignore urgen warnings from scientists who have been studying this for years from a hurricane targeted city...You just don't.




To which pres. Bush declares:

Sept. 1: At a news conference, President Bush announces former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton will lead a fund-raising campaign for hurricane victims, adding “this is an agonizing time for the people of the Gulf Coast.”

A little too late Mr.President

Hindsight is 20/20, but Bush and other's who are capable of making decisions should of taken this more seriously, as a president and leader you don't go around crossing your fingers in hopes that a devestating catastrope doesn't happen on your watch.

Clinton didn't want to take any responsibility and action when it came to terrorism on his watch, and apparantly Bush didn't want to heed the warnings of scientists about fixing these levee's on his watch.


Where's the leadership?

With the billions and billions of dollars going into Iraq in rebuilding and taking care of the Iraqi's, where's the funds for rebuilding weakening structures within this country to 'protect we the people' which should be his main goal.

I get email's from from Bush green watch, which is probably left winged funded, but there is so much irresponsibility from him when it comes to making decisions about environmental factors that affect us..

This is one of them. Terribly disheartening.

It's very likely the Bush administration's environmental policies contributed to the ferocity of the hurricane, in fact. Do you know about Bush's envirenmental policies? Do you know how he scoffs at global warming? The greenhouse effect? Educate yourself about it. Storms like Katrina are but one of the results of abusing our environment.

Brace for More Katrinas

For all its numbing ferocity, Hurricane Katrina will not be a unique event, say scientists, who say that global warming appears to be pumping up the power of big Atlantic storms.
...
This increase has also coincided with a big rise in Earth's surface temperature in recent years, driven by greenhouse gases that cause the Sun's heat to be stored in the sea, land and air rather than radiate back out to space.
...
On the other hand, more and more scientists estimate that global warming, while not necessarily making hurricanes more frequent or likelier to make landfall, is making them more vicious.
...
Just a tiny increase in surface temperature can have an extraordinary effect, says researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

So, no, I'm not blaming Bush for the storm, it's hurricane season. AND at the same time, his environmental policies may well have contributed to the strength of Katrina. And for sure the response to the ravaged city is a trickle compared to what it should be and should have been 3 days prior! We knew it was coming!

Because the Natinal Guard and their equipment are just not here where they're meant to be, the people of the area who couldn't get out just awaited the destruction and were left to be on their own. The helicopters should have been dropping sandbags to shore up the levees, but they're in Iraq. They should be hauling people out of there, but instead the people continue to die today!

So while I don't blame Bush entirely, I'm furious that his policies have made the situation much, much worse than it would have been had he given a crap about the people of his country.

Meanwhile:

Baghdad. The United States have offered to Sunni representatives USD 75 Million to sign the draft Constitution of Iraq, RIA Novosti announced, citing information of source close to the Constitutional Committee of the country, published in the Saudi daily Al Vatan.
Source

He continues to throw money into Iraq to pay for some signatures and tells the American public that Katrina victims need our financial help!

[edit on 1-9-2005 by Benevolent Heretic]

So what would the alternative have been? Bring the National Guard in before the hurricane hit so they could have lost as much equipment and supplies as the rest of the people in New Orleans did?

As to the climate change causing such events or making them more severe, we're working with a very small subset of weather data. Polution on earth was a lot worse in the late 1800s than it is now, and we're basing our information on the past 40 years, when we've been able to accurately measure the weather globally. Geologically, the Earth has cycled through cold and warm spells. We don't have weather conditions from these periods because man was just blossoming at the end of the last ice age. There's ample evidence for global warming, but there is equally ample evidence that an ice age is coming and these weather patterns would be typical of such a global climate shift.

Originally posted by junglejake Polution on earth was a lot worse in the late 1800s than it is now

AND

Were they to be reinforced beforehand, would they have been able to take the brunt of Katrina?

I think you're being unnecessarilly prudent - given the multi-billion dollars costs of recunstruction, woulda-shoulda-coulda "leadership" is the last resort, if at all. No debating that the science indicated more severe storms concurrent to the continued budget slashes by team Bush.

If we have more 3rd world nations now going through industrial revolutions than there were 1st world nations in the 1800's, how can you rationally say pollution was worse then? Add the exponetial growth of humans globally + 1st world vehicles and factories + 3rd world industrialization + deforestation from then to now.
I didn't look, but on ATS and/or TV I saw last season that every degree of ocean temp higher can drive up the intensity of the storm a category.
Florida's Black tide is well covered on ATS, as are the waste water restrictions lifted by Bush. People forget that the top people at the EPA have all resigned in protest, due to Bush's bending/breaking of enviromental safeguards.

Oh yes, Bush and the environment...blah, blah, blah.
"A" typical for most here.

Yes, junglejake, have you not learned yet that anything that occurs during and after the Bush Administration will be their fault?!
Come one dude, get with the program here.....

Remember, folks have to blame someone.
Just repeat after me: "Its always Bush's fault."
Don't think so, just read the replys of many of those within this topic.
Their eyes are wide-shut or is that eyes wide-open?

What a joke.




seekerof

Originally posted by junglejake
So what would the alternative have been? Bring the National Guard in before the hurricane hit so they could have lost as much equipment and supplies as the rest of the people in New Orleans did?

No, the alternative would have been (as per the plan) for the National Guard helicopters to come in after the storm (or several days before - after all we knew it was coming) and deposit the sandbags in the levee to shore it up. The sandbags were waiting, the helicopters had been promised, but they never showed up.

Polution on earth was a lot worse in the late 1800s than it is now

What? Where on Earth did you get that? And what's polution got to do with it anyway? Absolutely nothing. There's a lot more to the environment than pollution.

We don't have to speculate, the data is there. Real data.

Were they to be reinforced beforehand, would they have been able to take the brunt of Katrina?

All I can say to that is... What if we HAD spent the money to fix the levees and and it HAD kept the water from pouring into the city and causing thousands of deaths?


[edit on 1-9-2005 by Benevolent Heretic]

How about if New Orleans HAD not been built in a hole, BH?
Since your blaming Bush for the lack of funding to address those levee needs you and others speak of, which would not have made a dern difference and the results would have been nearly the same, maybe you guys can blame those who built New Orleans in a hole and then those who continued to build in that hole?

Apples and oranges right?
Damned if you do and damned if you don't, huh?

Its a shame that in time when we should be coming together to aid and support those struck by this natural castastrophe, that some feel the need to take advantage of the situation to political grandstand by pointing a finger and seeking to place blame and fault. Nice......







seekerof

Let's see if we can blame Bush for the facts that New Orleans was

(a) built below sea level, and

(b) sinking even lower each year with round-the-clock bilge pumps to keep the streets dry.

Or (c) that Lake Pontchatrain was one of the largest man-made lakes in North America, poised only a couple of miles north of this big, below sea-level, sinking hole in the gulf.

For extra bonus points, demonstrate how Clinton tried to fix the problem during his two terms, but that he was prevented by a sinister and mean-spirited republican congress.

Basically, the problem had been around since the '60's, and cries went up since then for something to be done. Especially since the Picayune articles (which the CIA includes in their briefings, presumeably) are read by every sitting president. And in a way eerily reminiscent of 9-11, the Clinton white house never took action either, and liberals dance around the fact. But it was this president's job to have fixed it in time fore a level one hurricane that approached Florida last week.

No wonder Bush gets such low marks from Democrats.


[oops. Seekerof beat me to it. I should have paid more attention in Mrs. Woods' typing class . . .]


[edit on 1-9-2005 by dr_strangecraft]

All the imaginative spin in the world cannot hide the fact that the Bush Administration chose to not spend money in an area that was known to need it. This choice has most likely resulted in thousands of deaths and billions more dollars.

Would the levies have broken anyway, even if strengthened as they should have been? Maybe. It's for sure they broke without that work. Work that was not done because the Bush Administration, supported by the Republican-dominated rubber stamp Congress, chose to spend the money on war instead.

Speculation about what would have happened in other situations are fine. But these inconvenient facts will keep coming around.

The Best of New Orleans

Among emergency specialists, "mitigation" -- the measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters -- is a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs. But since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster has been cut in half. Communities across the country must now compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars.

As a result, some state and local emergency managers say, it's become more difficult to get the equipment and funds they need to most effectively deal with disasters. In Louisiana, requests for flood mitigation funds were rejected by FEMA this summer. (See sidebar.) In North Carolina, a state also regularly threatened by hurricanes and floods, FEMA recently refused the state's request to buy backup generators for emergency support facilities. And the budget cuts have halved the funding for a mitigation program that saved an estimated $8.8 million in recovery costs in three eastern North Carolina communities alone after 1999's Hurricane Floyd.

Consequently, the residents of these and other disaster-prone states will find the government less able to help them when help is needed most, and both states and the federal government will be forced to shoulder more recovery costs after disasters strike.

In addition, the White House has pushed for privatization of essential government services, including disaster management, and merged FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security -- where, critics say, natural disaster programs are often sidelined by counter-terrorism programs. Along the way, morale at FEMA has plummeted, and many of the agency's most experienced personnel have left for work in other government agencies or private corporations.

And the American people, bless their hearts, are coming together to help as best they can in this situation. As they always do. It is the American 'leadership', that does not deserve the name, that is falling down on the job.

Let me guess here, from levees to continued blaming of Bush, I suppose that all of you are advocates for rebuilding New Orleans in the very same hole it was built in, costing mega-billions to do, so that New Orleans can then be hit again and re-flooded and re-destroyed?

Just a simple hash and rehash?

Btw, how many other natural disasters do you want to blame Bush for also? Can you list them for me, I'm a little slow on "imaginative spin", bear with me....







seekerof

[edit on 1-9-2005 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by Seekerof

Btw, how many other natural disasters do you want to blame Bush for also? Can you list them for me, I'm a little slow on "imaginative spin", bear with me....

I'm sure they'd prefer to wait and assign Bush-blame instantly as catastrophes happen. You know, to make sure they don't miss any.