Although New Orleans missed the full brunt of Hurrican Katrina on the first pass, it apears that the end result is the same. The levee around New orleans broke allowing the waters of Lake Pontchartrain to inundate the city. All of the worst case predictions of what would happen if New Orleans was hit by a major hurricane. The disgrace is that this might have been avoided where it not for George Bush’s insane illegal invasion of Iraq. Because of the close to half a TRILLION dollars that we have now squandered on Bush’s folly Work on improving the levee’s was canceled.

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.

Water levels are still rising in the city and the whole thing is one giant toxic soup. The water is full sewage, chemicals and who knows what else. And I just heard on the news that they are going to have to rebuild the entire electrical grid of New Orleans. There is also looting going on and not nearly enough national guard troops to help. Where are they all? In Iraq of course.

The people of New Orleans will not be able to return home for long time. There are also hundreds of thousands of people in Mississippi, and Alabama who have lost everything. Nature started the catastrophe on the Gulf Coast this week. But the policies Bush and co. will have made the human cost far worse than it might have been otherwise.