Question #1... No, Bush could not have prevented the disaster... That is rather obvious...

Question #2... Yes, in taking money from where ever he could find it to fund the War in Iarq, icluding funds that Congress had earmarked for FEMA, Bush, in essence, was not covering up the rear...

Question #3... See answer to question #1... The disaster was going to be a disaster irrwegardless of the Bush administartion's inablity to respond...

Question #4... Most likely... I think most engineers would agree with this assesssment... But keep in mind that the SELA had not seen this kind of underfundining for maintenance of the existing levees... Bill Clinton funded the maintenance at close to 100% of the Army Corps of Engineers request... Bush's funding was between 17% and 20% of requested funds... Now, here's where we part ways, GUEST... Had Bush had more monet available for domestic spending programs there is a chance, perhaps even a good chance that if the Army Corps of Engineer had recieve the levels of funding that it had requested under Clinton that there is, at least a chance, that the leeves wouldn't have been breeched... If you, GUEST, are an engineer, as the folks who are hired by the Army Corps of Engineers are, may they need you to come in and tell them why the $100M they requested in 2003 was wrong and where they had misplaced the decimel point... All I know is that these folks, who are slide rule kinda folks requested $100M to maintian the system and Buish sent um' $17M to $20M??? You can do the math...

Qusetion #5... No, again, GUEST, the disater was Hurricne Katrina... You won't find me saying that Bush 'caused the hurricne... But the reponse on the Bush administration showed that while Bush was long on talk (i.e. "It's my job to protect the American people..") when the chips were down we found that the Bush administration hadn't done the heavy lifting in setting policies, procedures and funding in place to protect the American people from either a natural or terrorist driven disaster... Yeah, Katrina exposed the Bush administration as one long on talk but short on walk...

Question #6... Again, nuthin' would have prevented Katrina from coming a shore but a fully funded FEMA, be a cabinet level department ot not, would have greatly cut the human loses if for no other reason than a fully funded FEMA, with an operational National Reponse Plan would have mobilized 3 days earlier than it did and that would have made a bif difference in the evacuation... Remeber, the Natioal Response Plan, which incidently failed under Katrina, called for mobilization from either natural ot terrorist situations...

Now as to GUEST's observations about me as person... Hey, when the chips are down and it is Monday morning quarterbacking it's comes down to folks payin' attention to detail... And it comes down to doing what you say... And it come down to the heavy lifting that is required to be successfull...

With that said, yes, as someone who has has always had by back and flanks covered, I know what it takes to be successfull... I have been successfull in life for all the rerasons that George Bush has been a failure...

Had I been in his position on 9/11 I would have take a very different path... When Bush turned a massive police axction ito some kind of absatract war against abstract enemeies he set the United States on a course for failure... Since then he has taken gobs of money that could have been used to help Americans to fight these rediculously unwinnable wars and funded these expensive and very problematic occupations...

Why did he do these things??? Well, not becuase he thought it was the right thing to do but because his handlers felt that there was nuthin' better than as "hot war" to keep his part ion power so it could pillage and rape the US treasury and American workers... This has long been the goal of the Republican Party and Bush doesn't get the glory of winning the battle... Certainlu his daddy and Reagan got the ball well down field and with the help of folks who, God bless 'um, think that gay marriage, abortion and flag burning are the three most important issues on the planet, have used these hot wars and hot button social issues to tay in power whilst fleecing the middle class and chipping away at the New Deal...

Yeah, had I'd been running the business---which it is-- I would have done an infinately better job because, first of all, screw politics when it comes to getting things done right... Yeah sure, it's fun to mess with the Bushites (not a slam...) here in Mudville but I have a history of working with folks who might fall into that category... I don't see "Bushite" in y real world... I have always beena community activist and you dance with the folks who come to the dance...

Hey, I'm not a GUEST... I'm transparent and my work over the last coup,e of decades in Leesburg, Va. ain't no secret and it's forced my to work with Bushites and not make nuthin' of it...

But, yeah, I wouldn't have made 9/11 a politcal thing to us for power to steal back promises made by empolyers or promises made by the New Deal...

I would have rolled up my sleeve and doen the heavy lifting... That would have meant funding the home stuff that needed to be funded and maybe not gotten re-elected but going out knowin' that I had done the right thing...

Bush didn't do that... He stole from our domestic programs, left our country more vulnerable than before 9/11 and Katrine is "Exhibit A"...

No Monday morin' quarterback, here, GUEST... I have a transparent history of walkin' the walk...

Just heard today from someone that the current mayor of Leesburg, Kristine Umstead said some very flattering things in a Town Council sessionc about my service to the Leesburg community while I was there...

Bush blew it...

Bobert