Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, writing in the Financial
Times this morning [no link yet], says, “the dominos are falling across
America” instead of the Middle East because of President Bush’s Iraq
obsession. His damning evidence?
In early 2001, shortly after President George W. Bush was
inaugurated and before 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
warned of the three most devastating disasters that could strike the
US: a terrorist attack in New York, a hurricane flooding New Orleans,
and a San Francisco earthquake. The Bush administration was focused on
its priority: Iraq.
Later in the piece Lind notes, “The New Orleans Times-Picayune published numerous articles
warning that the war in Iraq was taking money away from hurricane
protection on the Gulf coast.” Of course, that’s the complaint of the
Army Corps of Engineers, who have not proven the best trustees of public funds. The hurricane also came close on the heels of the pork-laden federal transporation bill and we won’t even mention the energy bill.
Lind himself seems never to have mentioned the levees in New Orleans before Katrina struck.
