From Uruknet:
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The full force of the Bush catastrophe is finally beginning to be felt.
Currently, New Orleans is flooded with tons of chemical contaminants and hydrocarbons "that will continue to poison the Gulf of Mexico for more than a decade". (Democracy Now) An official from the Environmental Protection Agency told the Washington Post, "This is the worst case.. There's not enough money in the Gross National Product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in this area."
Could the tragedy have been avoided?
What might have happened if the Bush Administration hadn't ordered the "steepest reduction in hurricane-and-flood control funding for New Orleans in history?" (Will Bunch "Why the Levee Broke")
Despite the constant warnings from SELA (Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project) Bush elected to under-fund the Lake Pontchartrain levee project by nearly 80%. Of the $20 million the project required, the Bush administration only provided a paltry $4 million. Now New Orleans is buried under a 10 ft deep chemical-stew and corpses are reported to be bobbing atop the storm waters in the poorer neighborhoods.
Welcome to Bush's America; where the uber-rich can expect lavish tax cuts and the huddled masses get a 3 day lock-up at the Superdome; where the government redirects desperately-needed resources to the oil wars in Mesopatamia and entire regions disappear beneath the flood-waters at home.
The New Orleans tragedy is America's tragedy; the inevitable victory of ideology over science; the triumph of greed over reason.
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