Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most
likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a
major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The
New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001,
"may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much
like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard
questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick
coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive?
Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina
could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from
an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying,
not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick
to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any
help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and
local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor
and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both
preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action.
"On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters
listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High
School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel
playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and
performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard
could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and
much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The
National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security
mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003
the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including
work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says,
citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried
to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as
homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason
for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat
of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the
corps' budget, including flood-control spending.
Third question: Did the Bush
administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all
accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild,
leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of
the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am
extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to
disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and
state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and
worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the
military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same
reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control
was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious
about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but
they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on
preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected
the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about
exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do
government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those
excuses, Americans are dying.

In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal
funding.

It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans
district, Corps officials said.

I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction,
said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the
problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one
fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest
thing to adapt to.

There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and
flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also,
a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has
been shelved for now.

The House of Representatives wants to cut the New Orleans district budget
21 percent to $272.4 million in 2006, down from $343.5 million in 2005. The
House figure is about $20 million lower than the president's suggested $290.7
million budget.

It's now up to the Senate. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans, is making no
promises.
It's going to be very tough, Landrieu said. The House was not able
to add back this money ... but hopefully we can rally in the Senate and get some
of this money back.

Landrieu said the Bush administration is not making Corps of Engineers
funding a priority.
I think it's extremely shortsighted, Landrieu said. When
the Corps of Engineers' budget is cut, Louisiana bleeds. These projects are
literally life-and-death projects to the people of south Louisiana and they are
(of) vital economic interest to the entire nation.

The Corps' budget could still be beefed up, as it is every year, through
congressional additions. Last year, Congress added $20 million to the overall
budget of the New Orleans district but a similar increase this year would still
leave a $50 million shortfall.

One of the hardest-hit areas of the New Orleans district's budget is the
Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May
1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.
SELA's budget is being drained from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4
million suggested for 2006 by the House of Representatives and the president.
The project manager said there would be no contracts awarded with this $10.4
million, Demma said.