Shit, it looks like I'm going to be forced to cut my vacation short too.
There're many a soul out there displeased with the Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.
People are angry that in early 2001, FEMA ranked the most catastrophic disasters facing the country to be a terrorist attack in New York City, a flood in New Orleans and an earthquake in San Francisco.
[In early 2001] the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country. The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.
People are complaining that Bush diverted flood engineers' funding to the war in Iraq.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward [the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project] 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.
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.
[...]
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."
People are angry that when a Category 5 hurricane that the
national weather service warned would cause "AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE." that no preparations were made to try and get people out of the path of certain death.
But look, that didn't happen!
And as far as not dealing with the aftermath... well, you can't have a contingency plan for everything.
September 11th was a wake-up call. We realized we needed to secure our airlines and airports.
Who would've thought a situation might arise in which massive amounts of people would need to be evacuated, given food, medical supplies and shelter?