skippy the bush kangaroo: two years ago today

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

two years ago today

it was two years ago today that katrina hit n'awlins with her full force. the levees broke and people panicked, having no leadership or help from their government. america watched in horror as we left one of our own cities, one of our most beautiful cities, submerge under the waves of apathy and crumbling infrastructure.

as with all things katrina, the gang at first draft are doing the best job of covering the still-continuing tragedy of this horrible event. too many good posts to link to one specifically; go by and see what scout prime, holden, athenae and their compatriots have to say about america's biggest self-made disaster.

Labels: katrina, new orleans

posted by skippy at 8:19 AM |

2 Comments:

We do love first draft, and thanks for linking to them.

Of course, hurricane Katrina hit Bay St Louis (MS) and Slidell (LA) with its "full force". The windspeeds in New Orleans were only around Category 2. New Orleans would've been okay if the flawed federal levees had held like they were supposed to.

commented by

oyster, 9:18 AM PDT

Katrina was a disaster fifty years in the making, according to an ex-Green Beret Army Officer friend who told me the following story.

From the late 1940s to the late '60s, this friends great-uncle was a senior Army officer in the Army Corps of Engineers and was involved and in the latter part of his career, in charge of bolstering the levee system protecting New Orleans. He had more than fifteen years on the job there and was intimately involved in the construction, repair, and enlargement of the vast system enclosing the city and its suburbs.

His great-uncle told my friend that as the years progressed, the city government of New Orleans became much more involved in contracting out and the bidding process for repairing the levees. The Democrats in charge of New Orleans began consistently lobbying for more control of this process and finally, over the protests of the professional military engineers, was able to have almost complete control over who got the contracts. The due diligence the Corps made after the repairs found more and more often that shoddy workmanship and materials were weakening the dykes, and reported this up their command chain to Washington [the military don't run to newspapers like the Times-Picayune who often side with the Democratic politicians].

After years of non-improvement of the process, the COE finally resigned itself to overseeing a politicized kickback and underperformance ritual with the levees. My friends uncle told him that sooner or later the "Big One" would knock over the levees. His uncle died before the "Big One" arrived in 2005.

And when it happened, whose door did the MSM lay the broken levees and subsequent disaster in front of?

The real culprits, which were the Democratic administrations Moon Landriau and his crooked relative Sen. Mary and their political ancestors and allies?

Or a fake bogus made-up smear, which blamed the Republicans?

Take one guess.

commented by

dave in boca, 10:41 AM PDT

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