Catastrophe was predicted - and ignored

[fencesitter]

Meant to post this yesterday.

<snip>
Do we not live in the richest country on earth? How dare anyone claim that it is "playing politics" to ask why officials weren't prepared to cope with this hurricane.

The Baghdad and New Orleans debacles lay bare the dangerous American aversion to long-term planning. Lack of planning for the postwar gave us the current mess in Iraq. Lack of preparedness for a New Orleans flood produced a disaster that makes America look like a Third World country. Offers of help are pouring in from around the world as if we were Bangladeshis; even Cuba offered more than 1,000 doctors.

<snip>
A former Republican congressman and assistant secretary of the Army named Michael Parker told the Washington Post that the governnment resisted long-term investment in projects like flood control. Parker was fired by the Bush White House after accusing it of shortchanging the Corps of Engineers.

Parker nailed the problem. Federal flood-control projects offer protection against future dangers but provide no political gains in the short term. Especially if the money would be spent on New Orleans, where the population is largely poor and black.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/columnists/12554105.htm


Another official who was canned when daring to introduce a bit of reality into the neocon wet dream.