Is There a Link Between Iraq and New Orleans?

[paineinthearse]

http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000225.htm

Blogged by JC on 08.31.05 @ 10:22 PM ET

Is There a Link Between Iraq and New Orleans?

Close readers of the blogosphere -- and the mainstream media -- will see that some are reporting that the disaster in the Gulf has been compounded by our diversion of...

Close readers of the blogosphere -- and the mainstream media -- will see that some are reporting that the disaster in the Gulf has been compounded by our diversion of resources to the Iraq war.
Editor and Publisher references a series of articles in the New Orleans Times Picayune -- before Katrina -- detailing that the Corps of Engineers was forced to short change flood preparedness for Iraq.

Even the Washington Post picks up on the theme, with an article today (albeit on A, 14) regarding how the lack of adequate National Guard personnel and resources may be hindering the relief efforts. Today I heard a caller on the Ed Schultz show suggest that the underfunding of flood preparedness dates to the Reagan Administration.

Obviously, we all need to do everything we can to save lives and bring about recovery to the Gulf. But at some point, these long term funding and resource issues need to be examined. Decisions do have consequences.

[paineinthearse]

1. 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?
'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch

Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIAEven though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. 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.

more.....

[paineinthearse]

2. Strain of Iraq War Means the Relief Burden Will Have to Be Shared

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083002162.html

Strain of Iraq War Means the Relief Burden Will Have to Be Shared

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page A14

With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday -- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.

As the devastation threatened to overwhelm state resources, federal authorities called on the Pentagon to mobilize active-duty aircraft, ships and troops and set up an unprecedented task force to coordinate a wider military response, said officials from the Northern Command, which oversees homeland defense.

National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001.

More than 6,000 Guard members were mobilized in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida when the storm struck on Monday, with the number rising to 8,000 yesterday and hundreds more expected to be called to active duty, National Guard officials said yesterday.

more........

[paineinthearse]

3. zzzz?

:banghead:

[LeftyElvis]

4. We

have 37000 troups in South Korea. Time to pull them out along with the troops in Iraq to head to NO. I hope Cindy is picking up on this theme.