THE NEW BATTLE FOR NEW ORLEANS
THE LINK WITH IRAQ
SAVE THE DATE: NYC MC EVENT–SEPTEMBER 6

No one knows how many have died. No one knows how many are sick. No one knows what happened to the Evacuation Plan. No one seems to know nuthin except what we can see..when our eyes are not tearing…

Headlines on Nola.com (The “Everything New Orleans” website) today: “CITY HITTING BOTTOM”…”Nightmare in the 9th Ward”.
…”Rescuers Had to Push the Bodies Back With Sticks.”..” Will New Orleans Ever Be the Same Again?…..”

New York Times: “Higher Death Toll Seen; Police Ordered to Stop Looters”

“Officials said there was no choice but to abandon New Orleans, perhaps for months. President Bush pledged vast assistance, but said, “This recovery will take years.” Another story: “Not since Sept. 11, 2001, has President Bush faced a test quite like the one he confronts now.”

The Guardian: “Lloyd Dumas, professor of political economy and economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, criticized the government’s failure to oversee a more efficient evacuation. “It’s remarkable that with the massive restructuring of the federal government that took place with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, they don’t have more well thought-out plans to evacuate a city like New Orleans,” he said.

“An emphasis should be placed on plans that have multiple purposes, like evacuation plans for a city like New Orleans that can of course be useful in the event of a terrorist attack but also in the event of a natural disaster like this one … There were plans during the cold war to evacuate major cities in a few days.”

First Comment from Overseas:

HUGO CHAVEZ: “That government had no evacuation plan, it is incredible, the first power in the world that is so involved in Iraq … and left its own population adrift…”
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N31407523.htm

FROM MY DRY LIVING ROOM……

You sit there watching the TV reports and staring in disbelief and then you start boiling as disgraced former GOP House leader Robert Livingston on FOX ventilates his frustration by denouncing the looters–how could they?–That is what he seems most upset about in all the carnage….

Click. On MSNBC, there’s a phone call from an aide in a State Hospital who reports that while the Tulane hospital across the street has been evacuated, no one has come to help the chronically sick people in his hospital.They are the poor. They are forgotten.

Click: Back to Fox: An articulate young doctor warns the worse is yet to come with public healh officials fearing that water-borne diseases can lead to an epidemic. What is being done about that? So far this next crisis is largely unreported!

Click. The Mayor was furious on Good Morning America denouncing the “friggin” people who let him and his city down by not fixing the levees and stopping the floods. Mayor disappointed was the graphic.

Click. Larry King is looking for good news in a story of the first baby being norn.

Click: On NBC , GE brings good things to life. At least one network is running a a prime time special. Brian Williams in shirtsleeves or Dateline.. Heartbreaking reports. People have no homes, no food. Are the other networks silent in prime time?

Cut to commerical for spicy shrimp. Yum. Flip the Dials: TV as usual, very different from the 9/11 no business as normal approach.

MAKING THE MESS IN IRAQ LOOK GOOD

The screw ups in our Gulf are approaching the ones in the other Gulf…It is almost at Iraq levels as poor planning and a delayed reponses contributes to more death and destruction…Its not just pathetic. Its criminal. Where is the cavalry? The Red Cross?

What is the priority–to defend Walmart from the looters or find shelter and food for people who are going without? Is shipping thousands of traumatized people from dome to dome, from the Superdome to Houston’s AstroDome in 500 buses the best we can do as a nation? One official says they will be there for weeks.

A part of America,and the center of our musical culture is being washed away while MTV holds an awards show that drew more viewers. Like in Iraq, we are sending in the military while platoons of doctors and construction workers and relief agencies are needed.

The lake that is now New Orleans will stand for all time as a symbol of the Bush Administration’s “achievement” even as an government economist spinsthe impact saying the effects will be short lived because of all the reconstruction money that will be pumped in putting people back to work. What people goes unsaid. Sounds like Iraq, doesn’t it? In many quarters the lights there are still not on.

Anger quickly turns to SHAME. Shame. Shame, Shame.

WHO DIDN’T SEE IT COMING?

Sid Blumenthal writes on Salon.com

“A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.

“Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans’ levees, but it was too late.

“The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: “No one can say they didn’t see it coming … Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/08/31/disaster_preparation/print.html

Why the Levee Broke
http://www.alternet.org/story/24871

DISSECTOR READERS OFFER ANALYIS

Mediachannel readers have been passing information along. Mary McCarthy notes:

“Officials knew w/out a doubt this disaster was a near inevitability. The city has 10,000 body bags stockpiled to handle the expected fatalities.

See this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. ‘04.

“The Red Cross has estimated 25,000 to 100,000 would drown, and I don’t think that is unrealistic,” said Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University’s Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. About 300,000 of the area’s 1.2 million people would not evacuate, he predicted, and many of those would be the most vulnerable - elderly, disabled, homeless, carless.”

http://hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/phillyinquirer100804.htm

“If it was clear to officials that up to 25% of the residents would be unable to evacuate, why do officials appear to be quite unprepared for this eventuality? Furthermore, the percentage of New Orleans residents living in poverty is very high. I heard between 30-40% but this is unconfirmed. Nevertheless, it’s clear many could not AFFORD to leave the city.

“Also, why - in light of the possibility of levee breaches and storm surges - did Tulane Univ. Hospital install their generators on the second floor, necessitating an evacuation? (while an evacuation was probably inevitable in any case, this second floor choice still left the hospital highly vulnerable.)

“Additionally, it’s also a FACT that dramatic wetland loss has left the southern coasts defenseless against these storm events. (again, see the above article.) and, in fact, the levee building contributes to the degradation, setting up a spiral pattern of levee building=wetland loss=flooding= more levees=more loss.

“I’m a reporter. I cover cable television. I monitored all the cable news channels yesterday. I only caught only a single, passing mention on Fox regarding wetland loss. (There may have been some that I missed). It was a remark made by a U.S. New and World Report reporter.

“CNN covered both global warming and the wetland loss issue. According to a local environmentalist, the problem is well known on the southern coasts and a $14 billion proposal - I believe developed in partnership w/ the Army Corp - to restore wetlands has apparently not been implemented. The advocate for this proposal, who said it was avail. on-line, observed that this country spends $14 billion in just two weeks in Iraq.

“Rebuilding is futile if state and federal officials fail to address the fundamentals that contributed to this problem in the first place, i.e. environmental degradation.

“The damage done by Katrina is far worse than 9-11. Furthermore, the probability of a hurricane “attack” was far, far greater than any terrorist attack.

HOME LAND SECURITY NOW IN CHARGE

Danny Cassidy notes that the Homeland Security bureaucracy has maneuvered itself into the disaster action while pollution standards are being relaxed: “Anti-pollution standards for gasoline and diesel fuels are being eased across the country until Sept. 15 in a step meant to ease shortages”(NYT)

He is amused and not amused:

“hahahahahahahahahahahahaha ya gotta laugh ta’ keep from cryin’. they are relaxing pollution standards. chertoff is looking for terrorrrrrists. the governor of Lousiana may have found the, tonight on PBS she spent most of her time ranting against those who “did not leave New Orelans” as told. (where were the bus tickets?). saying law and order would be first priority….”

TSUNAMI COMPARISON

Bradley Laing compares New Orleans to the Tsunami:

“The Tsunami killed maybe 150,000 without warning: New Orleans had decades of emrgency planning and a planned evacuation.

“The governments in the countries hit by Tsunamis never spent the money for an early warning system. Or in 2004, one would not have done any good because the tidal wave hit too fast.. Certainly some countries were hit first, and others later, so that in an age of instant messaging the word of a tsunami in one place could have been zapped to another place in danger and emergency plans
followed, if anyone had been willing to plan for it…

“People keep building in places where they are asking for trouble. Around New Orleans they drain the wet lands needed to absorb hurricanes.”…

IRAQ CONNECTION

Nicholas Karlin tells us: “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.”

http://mslibrarian.dailykos.com/

Ilene Proctor passes along info on the cuts in the city’s protection program:

(1) “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. 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.
– Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana;
New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

“2) 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.

“In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness: The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

“The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president’s 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed. “The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink,” he said. “I’ve got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we’re going to have to pay them interest.”…

THE WAR EFFECT

Paul Craig Roberts writes on Counterpunch.org

“Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush’s Iraq war. There were not enough helicopters to repair the breeched levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guards available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.

The situation is the same in Mississippi.

The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fools mission in Iraq.

Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.