Bush took away Levee improvement funding to fund Iraq War...

[cascadiance]

Well, this ought to make some of your blood boil! Had we not had the war on Iraq and moved money away from earlier plans to raise the levees around New Orleans, who knows, they might not be in half the mess they are in now! Another price we're (NO residents that is) paying for this insane war! Damn!

From:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/30/212451/290

Hurricane Protection Budget Cuts Exact a Big Price

By Josh Marshall
From: Politics

A number of blogs have referenced the article that appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on June 8th of last year on post-2001 federal budget cuts for hurricane preparedness and levee construction and improvement in New Orleans.

As far as I know the whole article is currently not available anywhere online -- at least I couldn't find it on google. So below we're making available excerpts of the piece so our readers can find out more details.

...

"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," Maestri said. "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."

...

Levee-raising is only part of the flood-related work that has stopped since the federal government began reducing Corps of Engineers appropriations in 2001, as more money was diverted to homeland security, the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq.

:mad: :grr: :banghead:

[Raster]

1. and the pResident's blood-sucking friends and business pards

grow richer while the country grows poorer. Have we not had enough?

[Southsideirish]

2. If the Dems don't make this a major issue they are friggin' pathetic. NT

This "man" is an abomination before all the world.

[rodeodance]

3. several of these posted today--but --we should all send to ALL media

outlets!!

[tyedyeto]

4. * & Co. took monies away from a lot more than levee funding for Iraq

Cuts were made in so many areas of the federal Gov't to 'pay' for the illegal war it would make your head spin to think about each and every one of them.

[cascadiance]

5. Oh, I have no doubt about that!

But here's a CONCRETE example of what the massive costs of such a frivolously spent war we got ourselves into is doing to us, in both money terms and in human terms! People need to understand that the Iraq war DIDN'T NEED to happen, but keeping our heatlh, education, welfare, and nation's infrastructure DOES need funding or we ultimately will pay for it big time! Hope Louisiana residents hear this story enough to become a TRUE blue state in 2006!

[tyedyeto]

7. It is a big example...

what I'm afraid of is that eventually this will be a small example of what * & Co has done to this nation considering what they have done to our economy and our nation.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

6. I've seriously been wondering about this

I recall being told back in 2000 about a plan to raise the levees in NO by a family member. I have no news links nor officials to quote so I've not mentioned it yet here on DU.

What I've been wondering was why this plan never went into action? Funding, or a lack thereof, was my first thought. Now it appears that was indeed the case.

If you have a city that is threatened by total devastation if it were to have a levy breach, would you not do something preemptive if you were the president of the United States?

I wonder if NO would have said that their levy system was at risk to a terrorist attack if it would have gotten the needed funding?

[tyedyeto]

8. Multiply that by how many infrastructures there are in this country

and the chances of a natural disaster happening... be it hurricane, earthquake, volcanic, floods, drought, etc. could be disastrous to this country.

Underfunding of infrastructures to support the 'war on terrorism' is not what this country is all about. Let's take care of our own first.

[cascadiance]

9. The Bushes should be sued for this!

Along with anyone else that felt the invading Iraq was "important to them" and helped force us into war. Class Action lawsuit! No more of Bush getting "bailed out" for f'ing up!

[buddysmellgood]

10. Fighting for New Orleans would be a noble cause.

[truth2power]

11. If you scroll waaay down

on that link in the OP, someone has found an archived pdf file of the fron page of the Times Picyune article. The poster didn't know how to access page 7, which continues the article. I don't know how to copy a link to a pdf file.

[cascadiance]

12. Here's the link...

http://www.unaanderson.com/images/jun_8_tue_tp.pdf

It still doesn't allow one to get to the rest of the article, but it does document that this story was published then... Perhaps someone can look to find another more complete link to this June 8th news article.

[truth2power]

14. Thanks, Cali. Could you tell me

how to copy a pdf link? If you highlight the link in the address bar the "copy" function is greyed out in the drop down menu.

[cascadiance]

17. Depends on the browser you have...

Many will have a way of "right clicking" to copy the link address. One sure way for most browsers is to actually click on it, and copying the link at the window at the top. Though in some cases PDF files might get loaded into a separate PDF viewer which might not display the URL address so handily.

[demgurl]

13. NO can now be counted as a bug caualty

of the war in Iraq. Every person who died, in NO, should be counted and remembered. * truly is running our country into the ground.

demgurl

[dogday]

15. This is one of those pieces of information

you will never hear on TV. We need to get the word out by emails, etc...

[indepat]

16. Symptomatic, a microcosm, of the entire neocon agenda and priorities,

yet the idolatrous throngs chant: four more years, four more years.

[cascadiance]

18. There's another thread on this subject...

With other article links in it and more discussion on it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4520414&mesg_id=4520414

Interesting to see how this criminally irresponsible handling of funding and FEMA management of this Bush administration is not only shown through this example (which is horrendously bad enough), but also in other areas too, like Bush's FEMA sitting on an emergency request (Gray Davis along with a bipartisan group of California politicians) to clean up the damage introduced by the bark beetle in California's parklands that made the wildfires a year ago or so infinitely worse than it should have been too. The letter came the week before the fires started after being on the fed's desk for months, leaving no time for California to work on their own solution to deal with the problem before catastrophe struck, much like what happened with the levees here!

Some others on that thread noted that smilar problems also happened in North Carolina too, in terms of it's readiness to deal with storm damage as well.

If we have an impeachment trial that deals with what the impact of funding this illegal war has been, these pieces of information should DEFINITELY be presented as concrete examples of how our nation has suffered for these neocons to carry on their criminal agendas.