vanBuskirk
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Posted - 2005.09.07 18:41:00 -
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I'm British, not American, and I think my country is unlikely to suffer a disaster like this (though we did have a category 3 tornado in Birmingham recently ).
But I still have a few comments to make.
New Orleans has been dodging this particular bullet for at least 70-80 years, and this time its luck ran out. I have the greatest sympathy for the people affected by this disaster, but none at all for those responsible for it. Which includes in no particular order the following:
The US Corps of Engineers, who have been fighting nature for 80+ years, in that the river Mississippi (I think) really ought to have changed its course many years ago, as all rivers that end in a delta do. Why? Because the port of NO would have no ocean access and it would ruin the port. In other words, money.
When you try to frustate Mother Nature, sooner or later she will turn around and bite you in the ****. Another example of this is the US forestry organisation (name?), which decided to do the same, in that for many years they attempted to stop any and all fires in America's forests. The result? The Yellowstone fire - 100,000 square miles that look like the surface of the moon.
The US Federal Government, which in its infinite wisdom decided to disband local emergency organisations run partly by people with military or similar backgrounds, and replace them by FEMA, an organisation run by CYA bureaucrats. And we all know that bureaucrats couldn't run, to clean up a British saying, a party in a brewery. Who cares if anything happens right, or at all, as long as the right forms are filled out in quadruplicate?
Numerous companies which decided to put vital installations 8 feet below sea level in a hurricane risk zone. This isn't unique to Louisiana by the way; I am told that the California disaster relief organisation's HQ actually straddles the San Andreas fault. What genius thought up that one, and who bribed him to do it? Why did it happen? Money again.
This mess is not only going to change many people's lives forever, and not in a good way (and let's not forget those who are dead because of it), but is going to ruin the reputation of the US for a very long time. Because the Administration has been revealed as a bunch of incompetent chair-warmers who couldn't be trusted to run a burger van. From the very top down.
The people doing the work of cleaning up this have been magnificent. As usual, they have been betrayed shamefully by the people in charge. As has the rest of America, and the world.
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"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent".
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