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FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR "No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Htownhero, Aug 31, 2005.

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  1. Htownhero

    Htownhero Member

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    http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

    FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR

    "No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

    By Sidney Blumenthal

    In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

    Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

    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."

    The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

    In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

    "My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

    In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

    In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

    On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

    Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
     
    #1 Htownhero, Aug 31, 2005
  2. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Member

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    Its all Bushes fault!!! It was only a matter of time before someone blamed the president.

    And just how long has this city been in a bowl? Since year 2000? It doesn't matter how much you spend on preperation, this city will always be screwed during a major hurricane.
     
    #2 Space Ghost, Aug 31, 2005
  3. gucci888

    gucci888 Member

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    Exactly what I was thinking. Someone's gotta be blamed, might as well blame it on Bush. Former Clinton advisor huh, I forgot how much they did to save New Orleans. No one cared about New Orleans until the hurricane, nobody wanted to help them out, not Clinton, not Reagan, not W, but now all of the sudden, it's Bush's fault? I love the all the little articles that come out, they amuse me.
     
    #3 gucci888, Sep 1, 2005
  4. snowmt01

    snowmt01 Member

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    Bush has been cutting research funding for some years now. That's one
    of the reasons that he is much hated in the scientific world. You can
    hardly find many environmental and biological researchers supporting him.

    NASA and EPA used to sponsor a lot of research projects but now are
    very stingy. NIH's funding has remained the same for several years,
    which is actually decreased because of inflation.

    Reseach may not help New Orleans that much. But if current funding
    policy continues, US will no longer be THE leader in scientific research.
     
    #4 snowmt01, Sep 1, 2005
  5. MadMax

    MadMax Member

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    ridiculous. absolutely ridiculous and disgusting. grandstand politics somewhere else.

    i blame Nixon for the Big One that hasn't hit LA yet...but certainly will, someday.
     
    #5 MadMax, Sep 1, 2005
  6. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    I agree, but IMHO, when the right wing politicized 9/11, everything suddenly became fair game on both sides. When will it end?
     
    #6 RocketMan Tex, Sep 1, 2005
  7. MR. MEOWGI

    MR. MEOWGI Contributing Member

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    I think people have a right to b****.
     
    #7 MR. MEOWGI, Sep 1, 2005
  8. MadMax

    MadMax Member

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    i won't defend that either.

    it's time to stop playing for a side and just get crap done. this problem right requires a solution. not a republican one. not a democrat one. just a solution.
     
    #8 MadMax, Sep 1, 2005
  9. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    Question is.....what kind of disaster or national catastrophe will it take to get everyone working together again?
     
    #9 RocketMan Tex, Sep 1, 2005
  10. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Member

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    I don't see what most of the stuff the guy talks about has to do with the flooding of New Orleans. The budget cuts for flood control projects, ok. The loss of wetlands, fine. The Morning After Pill? Wtf does that have to do with New Orleans?

    What is freaky about this catastrophe is that we did see it coming -- not like this guy is saying, but in a very plain way. We've known they're in a bowl. We've known they were at risk if they got a direct hit from a powerful hurricane. We watched said hurricane approach all weekend. And, even with all the preparations we've made -- the levee systems, the mandatory evacuation, the disaster plans -- we still somehow were caught with our pants down. It's like we knew it could be a disaster but didn't think it would actually be a disaster. To sit here and watch Katrina come up all weekend, it's like waiting for someone to punch you in the nose. Surreal.
     
    #10 JuanValdez, Sep 1, 2005
  11. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Max,

    If you keep cutting public spending on infrastructure and repairs you can eventually get in a bind. Don't do the right maintenance it can lead to a disaster.
     
    #11 glynch, Sep 1, 2005
  12. glynch

    glynch Member

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    True, it is time to rescue people. Who can argue with that? It is also time to take steps to prevent this from happening again. I wouldn't want the Head of Fema to spend all day on a chatboard defending Bush or attacking him, it doesn't mean that the general non-involved public should agree not to think about the causes and how to prevent it again.

    For instance, hopefully they haven't done the same stunt when it comes to protecing Houston-Galveston.

    I think you are just as guilty of playing politics in a way, when you imply that assumption that if folks blame those responsible for cutting say maintenance on the levees and pumps in order to fund tax cuts, that this means the government won't try to rescue the people effected.
     
    #12 glynch, Sep 1, 2005
  13. MadMax

    MadMax Member

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    glynch --

    i'm not about pointing fingers. particularly not at this stage. you can point all you like, it isn't making the situation any better right now.
     
    #13 MadMax, Sep 1, 2005
  14. rhadamanthus

    rhadamanthus Member

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    I agree with Max - but I have not seen enough action from Bush. Frankly, I don't give a **** about his upcoming "tour of the region". Get some dam food and order out there! I have family and friends in that area - why the hell is more not being done QUICKER?

    Your political orientation aside - this should disturb you.
     
    #14 rhadamanthus, Sep 1, 2005
  15. basso

    basso Member
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    #15 basso, Sep 1, 2005
  16. vwiggin

    vwiggin Member

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    A Republican president is suppose to be good at three things:

    1. Fiscal resopnsibility.
    2. Win wars.
    3. Maintain social order.

    What we have is:

    1. Irresponsible tax cuts.
    2. Getting our asses handed to us in Iraq.
    3. Inability to respond to looting in NO.
     
    #16 vwiggin, Sep 1, 2005
  17. wnes

    wnes Contributing Member

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    Honestly, what can you expect from a Bush woman?
     
    #17 wnes, Sep 1, 2005
  18. BMoney

    BMoney Member

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    With all of the sympathy I am supposed to feel for George W. Bush, I really feel bad about all the poor left behind to die like dogs. Local, state and federal governments simply didn't care about them. Are you telling me that those people wanted to stay in the face of a category 4, or 5 hurricane? Are you telling me that the government couldn't go through those neighborhoods a day or two before it hit Louisiana and Mississippi with school buses and take them out of harms way? Forget drastically cutting budgets to prepare for storms like these (to pay for preventitive war and unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy...forget that even), why did they turn their back on the poor from the outset? They basically told those people that in the event of a storm like Katerina "you are on your own." If you aren't outraged about this then why call yourself a Christian? Why give a crap at all about anybody? I am not attacking anybody in particular on this BBS, but I think are some questions that need to be answered.


    http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0905/01edwitt.html

    Each time you hear a federal, state or city official explain what he or she is doing to help New Orleans, consider the opening paragraphs of a July 24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

    "City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

    --snip--

    And yet apparently there was no emergency plan and no resources to evacuate "the carless, the homeless, the aged and infirm."

    In this era when we are a nation at risk of terrorism and natural disasters, we can only hope that what is happening in New Orleans is not built into the fabric of our national homeland security policy. We should provide security for everyone, including the poor, aged and infirm.
     
    #18 BMoney, Sep 1, 2005
  19. vwiggin

    vwiggin Member

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    Great article.

    After this disaster, I AM very worried about our government's ability to respond to the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

    Was Bush telling the truth when he said that fighting the war in Iraq will in no way detract from our homeland security or our efforts to capture Bin Laden?
     
    #19 vwiggin, Sep 1, 2005
  20. rubytuesday

    rubytuesday Member

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    #20 rubytuesday, Sep 1, 2005
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