About those levees - Sister Toldjah

There’s been a lot of Bush-blaming going on in the last week by the usual suspects about the fact that funding for the US Army Corps of Engineers had been decreased by a substantial amount last year in favor of pumping more money into the Iraq war effort. The conclusion drawn from that from that same crowd is that if Bush hadn’t have called for the decrease in funding for the US ACE, the levees that burst earlier this week after Hurricane Katrina’s rampage would have been upgraded quickly so as to avoid the exact scenario that sadly happened in New Orleans on Monday.

Wrong.

This National Geographic piece dispels that misconception (emphasis added):

Until the day before Katrina’s arrival, New Orleans’s 350 miles (560 kilometers) of levees were undergoing a feasibility study to examine the possibility of upgrading them to withstand a Category Four or Five storm. Corps officials say the study, which began in 2000, will take several years to complete.

Upgrading the system would take as long as 20 to 25 years, according to Al Naomi, the Corps’ senior project manager for the New Orleans District.

Hat tip: Bill Hobbs

Keep that info in mind next time someone tells you that the levee breaks were "W’s fault." They never were, and this article cements that assertion.

Related: Jeff Goldstein points out a glaring hypocrisy in the NYTimes position(s) on funding for the ACE. Now isn’t that a shocker?

(Cross-posted at BlogsForBush)

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Technorati Tags: Flood aid, Hurricane Katrina

abehnke says:

September 4, 2005 at 12:37 am

susan hit it right and the lost dog needs to get a clue. New Orleans has, and even before the battle of Katrina HAD, what appears to be a perfectly workable emergency plan of action in place for quite some time. Using a link at ST, I was able to read through the emergency plan. On the surface, at least, the New Orleans emergency plan addressed every single one of the most insidious developments that led to the escape from civilized behavior that has been going on in New Orleans. Sad to say for the Lunatic Left, nowhere in the stucture of implementation of the plan is the President of the United States ever mentioned. Instead what you find in the plan is that the whining mayor of New Orleans, his bowling buddy at the office of emergency management for the city of New Orleans, and the ineffectual, if not incompetent chief of the New Orleans Police Department, are supposed to be the top three movers and shakers in this plan to minimize damage to the people, if not property in the city of New Orleans. The plan has an evacuation procedure that should have started and been implemented several days before the Battle with Katrina took place, and Katrina won. Number four on the list of leaders who should be protecting the citizenry from harms way is of course, little miss muffet who sat on her tuffet doing nothing in Baton Rouge. Now the left, ie dems, socialists, and bush haters have four huge craters to try and cover up and/or disperse the blame for. The bulk of their problem really stems from the fact that not a single one of these four leaders (??????) happens to be a card carrying, bike riding, physically and mentally fit member of the party of Lincoln. How long does it take you to fill the grand canyon with a teaspoon??????

Common Sense Political Thought » Blog Archive » Promoting fluff, while ignoring news says:

March 2, 2006 at 10:32 am

[…] Rather, my question is: why are the media so willing to print this kind of fluff, non-story (as though President Bush could have done anything about the levees a week before the hurricane hit, when the Corps of Engineers were still in the middle of a multi-year study on how to strengthen the levees), but are so steadfastly ignoring the Able Danger story, one which carries huge implications for how we conduct the war against Islamic fascism? […]