Well, yeah, GUEST, it is common for governmental agencies to take a budget and add an extra 1O to 15 percent to it knowin' that it's gonna be cut by, ahhhh, 10 or 15 percent... This is almost S.O.P. in not only government but in the private sector, as well...

But an 83% cut??? I mean, let's get real here... You can't possibly believe that the Corps only needed $17M to maintain the levee and kew that they would have to request $100M to get the $17M???

Was the disaster planned out??? LOL... No, Bush may have usurped a lot of power since 9/11 but makin' hurricans ain't in the scope of what he can or cannot do... But the response to the disaster did bring one thing into focus: Bush has been spending way too much time and tax payers money conducting his wars of choice and not paying enough attention to the nuts and bolts of really protecting the American people...

And, not to get too far off course here, but this isn't entirely Bush's fault in that our political system is so driven by money and our leaders are too busy chasin' bucks to stay in power than doing a good job once there... Yeah, since 2000 it has gotten much worse... Bushm in order to maintain his power has had to raise one heck of a lot of money and has spent more time politicin' that any president in history... Yeah, lots of those trips where Bush apologists say Bush is on the job are nuthin' more than fund raising trips...

But with that said, Bush is the CEO and he was AWOL (too busy playing politics and not enought playing manager...) when the heavy lifting was needed to get the National Reponse Plan funded and workable... Especially after 9/11...

Do you realize there was supposed to be mock disaster run-through in Louisana well prior to Katrina but that the federal funds didn't come thru???

That's what I mean...

The boy was just too focused on fund raising, keeping the American people entertained with a new and shiny war, politicing for the '04 election and not enough time at the office doing what he called the "hard work"...

But in the '04 election we heard over and over the phrase "It's my job to protect the American people"... You know, almost as if he believed that he had done the heavy lifting to make that claim... But we now see that he hadn't done the "hard work"... This "protect the American people" was just another slick ad-man phrase that had come outta Karl Rove's office that had absolutley nuthin' to do with reality...

And that is why this is a scandal...

Yeah, Bush may escape the truth of Katrina for awhile but historian will get it right... There's just too much evidence to escape... And when they take on Katrina there won't be a revisionist alive with the capabilities to sugar-coat the major blunders by Bush and his inner circle in regards to the preparedness of the Bush administartion to protect the American people from a catastrophy, man made or not....

And to this very day the Bush administartion continues to sandbag and hope that Katrina will just fade away but it won't...

And, BTW, GUEST, you still haven't gotten around to the time line question of when Chertoff ordered mobilization...

Bobert