 The failure of the levee can be traced to far-Left activist groups - the Sierra Club, American Rivers...
The Katrina Conundrum
GOP USA ^ | 13 September, 2005 | J. King
Posted on 09/14/2005 12:21:13 PM PDT by The Right Stuff
The Katrina Conundrum
By Jennifer King
September 13, 2005
Almost two weeks later, the Katrina blame game goes on. All of the usual suspects - Hillary Clinton, Sid Blumenthal, Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson et.al have tried to turn this tragic disaster into a crass political advantage against President Bush. It is always grimly ironic when the party of segregation and Ku Klux Klanners claims that it is the Republicans who are racist.
The lead in to Katrina was punctuated by errors on all sides. The citizens of New Orleans were warned that a category four, perhaps five hurricane was making its way to their shore. For decades, engineers and even the Times Picayune had warned of massive flooding if a levee - rated for a category three - broke. All hurricane victims are cautioned to have ample water, canned goods and first aid materials available. Most guides warn that it will be several days before massive relief can reach the victims.
The city of New Orleans, likewise, did have a hurricane evacuation plan - revised in the year 2000, before President Bush took office. The plan states that in case of mandatory evacuation, "School and municipal busses, government owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuation." Nevertheless, Mayor Roy Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco did not utilize the hundreds of school and municipal busses that were later photographed sitting, now unusable, in their flooded lots. Instead of an orderly evacuation before the storm, displaced citizens were sent to the Superdome, where there was no stored food or water, but thuggish criminals aplenty.
On Saturday night, August 27th, the National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield phoned both Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, in order to warn them of the seriousness of the storm. Mayfield urged a mandatory evacuation. President Bush called Nagin once and Blanco twice, to urge an evacuation. Inexplicably, Governor Blanco refused. A voluntary evacuation order persisted until Sunday morning. Likewise, under the Stafford Act, a state governor must agree to declare a state of emergency and allow the federal government to move troops and resources into their state. President Bush urged Governor Blanco to do this, on Friday. She refused. On Monday, Katrina roared ashore, packing winds of up to 150 mph. The initial damage in New Orleans was light, until a 200 foot gap in the 17th Street Canal appeared.
Mayor Nagin and the New Orleans Police Department should likewise not be able to shirk their responsibility as first responders. Lacking communications, many policemen either turned in their badges or simply didn't report for duty. Supposedly, up to 30% of the NOPD was gone during the disaster. Rather than stopping the rampant looting that occurred, some policemen reportedly joined in. Mayor Nagin, who should have been responsible for implementing the city's hurricane plan and rescuing thousands of New Orleanians, instead went on the radio and launched a profanity laced tirade against the feds. The media was eager to join in, leveling their criticism at Bush and FEMA instead of Nagin and Blanco mostly because Mayor Nagin is an African-American and a Democrat, and Governor Blanco is both female and a Democrat. Mayor Nagin later said that he could not use the school busses because they "didn't have toilets" and that he couldn't evacuate people to shelters "unless they had supplies".
On Thursday, even more shocking revelations came out. Major Garrett, reporting for Fox News, reported that the American Red Cross had trucks full of food and supplies, ready to enter New Orleans on Tuesday. They were stopped by members of the Louisiana State Department of Homeland Security, because the Governor wanted "people out of New Orleans" and worried about "creating a magnet at the Superdome". The Salvation Army reported encountering the same barrier during their rescue attempts. The LA DHS is run by the state.
National Review's John Berlau traced the levee failure back to the 1990s. In 1996, he reports, the Sierra Club sued the Army Corps of Engineers over their plan to raise and fortify some Mississippi River levees. The Sierra Club were joined by the anti-dam group American Rivers. In 1997, the suit was settled, with the Army Corps agreeing to do more environmental impact studies before performing their work on 303 miles of waterfront in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The failure of the levee and Mayor Nagin's inaction can be traced to three far-Left activist groups - the Sierra Club, American Rivers and the ACLU - which was the group that insisted people couldn't be rescued unless they were put into adequately supplied shelters. The appalling aftermath of Katrina can be laid squarely on the Left hand side of the aisle.
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In 1998 the Department of Justice brought charges under the Wire Act against 22 American citizens involved in managing foreign-based sites. "You can’t hide online," Janet Reno, the attorney-general, warned Internet betting operators, "and you can’t hide offshore."
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09-14-2005, 08:24 PM
