Sydney Blumenthal on BBC World Today

Hey folks,

I was dropping Jung off at the airport and happened to hear former Clinton aid Sydney Blumenthal on the BBC program The World Today. (The September 2nd 06:00 GMT program.) He described a list put together after 9/11 describing the biggest threats to the US. They were:

1. Another terrorist attack on New York City
2. A major earthquake in the Bay Area
3. Flooding of New Orleans due to a hurricane

The threat of hurricane and the threat of a levee breach were widely known by the appropriate government agencies and had been widely reported in the press. The Times-Picuyne, now delivered only online as its presses are under water, apparently did a series of stories about the scope of the threat a while back. But dear Mr. Bush said this morning on ABC that no one could have anticipated the breach of the levee. Idiot.

Blumenthal reported that funds that were earmarked for the Army Corp of Engineers, ostensibly to study and repair levees around New Orleans, were directed to the war efforts in Iraq. I'll post the audio as soon as I can get it. In the mean time, read this article by Blumenthal in a German newspaper:

"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."