Some 7,000 soldiers from the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard are stationed in Iraq. They include more than 3,000 members of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, a unit based in and around New Orleans.
Those soldiers, who represent 40% of Mississippi's and 35% ofLouisiana's regular Guard strength, were forced to watch helplessly from their barracks in Iraq the past few days as the hurricane swept through their neighborhoods and threatened their families.

...Sure, no one could have prevented a powerful hurricane from hitting the Mississippi Delta. But federal and local government leaders all knew that a direct hit on New Orleans from such a storm could mean catastrophe. The Times-Picayune of New Orleans published numerous articles during the past two years warning that the city and federal officials weren't prepared. The newspaper's articles also revealed that Bush was making huge cuts to an Army Corps of Engineers project meant to shore up the levees and pumping stations that protect Delta residents from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi.
That project, known as the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, has been in effect since 1995. But spending on it has been reduced substantially since 2000.

"It appears the money has been moved into the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price that we pay," the emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, La., told The Times-Picayune in June 2004. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished."

Earlier this year, Bush, this President who is spending more than $1 billion a week on this mess in Iraq, proposed less than $11 million in new funding for Louisiana's flood control project. The Army Corps of Engineers wanted at least $62 million. Among the items the White House cut from that flood control budget was money to study how New Orleans could cope with a Category 5 hurricane. Well, the entire country learned how this week. We'll all be paying for that terrible lesson for decades to come.

Originally published on September 1, 2005


from article Sep 1 New York Daily News