No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming

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" No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming "

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:09:03 -0700

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105L.shtml

 

" No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming "

By Sidney Blumenthal

Salon.com

 

Wednesday 31 August 2005

 

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. "

 

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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.