Thread: Bush: No one knew the levees would break

How could I forget to blame Bush for this?

Originally Posted by Leader

How could I forget to blame Bush for this?

It's Bush's fault that I couldn't find my dress socks this morning too.

Broken, you're such a broken record it's getting tedious.

-dale

Karl Rove controls the weather, ya know. Matter of time before he summoned the hurricane, and sicced it on New Orleans, because they went for Kerry.

If Florida hadn't gone for Bush this time...WHAMMO! (And note: Miami voted for Kerry and Katrina stopped by to visit THEM! :eek)

DC better be glad the Prez and Darth Rove live there, man, or it would be DOOMED!

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Karl Rove controls the weather, ya know.

Last I checked, FEMA and Army Corps of Engineer budgets are not defined as "weather". And Bush has cut them again and again. Here's another little bit of info for you from the Times-Picayune, June 8th, 2004:

"For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.

"I guess people look around and think there's a complete system in place, that we're just out here trying to put icing on the cake," said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. "And we aren't saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place."

...

"I can't tell you exactly what that could mean this hurricane season if we get a major storm," Naomi said. "It would depend on the path and speed of the storm, the angle that it hits us.

"But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."

...

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

Here's more from Andrew Sullivan:

THE COMING STORM: If what this article says is true, the Bush administration has a major political problem on its hands. Money quote:

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "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."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

Yes, some would even blame Bush and the war for a hurricane. But blaming Bush and the war for the poor state of New Orleans' levees is a legitimate argument. And it could be a crushing one. LINK

I hope the Dems really pick up this line of thinking. It just what the Republicans need to get to 60 in the senate.

Bush is the GREATEST president AMerica has ever had. He is doing a great job cleaing up the dirt in America and around the world. By letting the levees break, he cleansed new orleans of the black race. By destroying iraq, he cleansed the world of a large number of the islamics.

You have a city that is below sea level flanked by the mighty miss and a large brackish lake protected by two levees rated to protect against a category three. Pretty easy to figure what would likely happy. But to all the liberals blaming Bush, we haven't invented transporters yet. We can't snap our fingers and make everything right. It takes time and resources to evacuate. Thanks to your cost cutting from 1992-2000 we didn't have those resources on scene.

It is not Bush's personal fault, but then the Administration should have looked into it if indeed it was foreseen or a doubt raised.

Had it been done so, then the damage would have been less and the disgraceful conduct of some of the poorer section and the total and abject failure of the local administration not hit the international headlines or brought so much of sorrow to the US citizens.

Who could have predicted that a minor category 1 that is supposed to make landfall on the east coast and dissipate into irrelevancy would sail over florida, intensify into a category 5 in the gulf, and proceed to destroy New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast?

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

Who could have predicted that a minor category 1 that is supposed to make landfall on the east coast and dissipate into irrelevancy would sail over florida, intensify into a category 5 in the gulf, and proceed to destroy New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast?

The possibility of that happening should never be eliminated considering the unpredictability of hurricanes.

Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that if your city is 14 ft. BELOW sea level, and a Cat 5 hurricane is coming directly at you, that you are not going to take on water, and any levees that are in place WILL BE subject to a certain extent of damage. AND, that you had better have some plan in place JUST IN CASE this event occurs.

I live on the southern east coast, and let me tell ya sweetie, we learn to keep watch on them even in the tropical storm stages.

So, in other words, evacuate everyone on the coast from Corpus Christi to Boston every time there's a tropical depression in the south Atlantic because there's a chance it become a cat 5 and hit them.

Yeah I know Bush is responsible for this also. Lets see ummm I guess everything that goes wrong is Bush's fault. Please, does the blaming ever stop? Where is the individual responsibility in this? But then again who needs it when we can just point fingers at a U.S. president that happens to be unpopular because we are at war. Didnt Kennedy say."Ask not what your country can do for you..ask what you can do for your country"? Im sorry but from where im from most men and women when they buy a house research such things as flooding etc etc. Its called doing your homework first and foremost. Afterall isint it the most important investment you will ever make? This is not to say my heart doesn't go out to them and all of the others that are suffering because it certainly does without question. Im just sick of people not atoning for their own actions when they can blame a president or anyone else. Heres the drill plain n simple BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS!

The new line is "Don't care about you can do for others car about what others can do for you."