Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die

Counterpunch
September 3 / 4, 2005
Failure on Every Front
Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The raison d'etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in
order to protect America from terrorism and to insure America's oil supply.
On both counts the Bush administration has failed catastrophically.

Bush's single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a
natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American
history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of
lives, and 80% of one of America's most historic cities is under water.

If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest
terrorist success in history.

Prior to 911, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New
Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the Southeast
Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to protect the
strategic port, the refineries, and the large population.

However, after 2003 the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war in
Iraq. During 2004 and 2005 the New Orleans Times-Picayune published nine
articles citing New Orleans' loss of hurricane protection to the war in
Iraq.

Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans
catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government preferred
war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home.

Bush's war left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the funding to protect
New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18, 2004, the
Corps' project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune: "the levees are
sinking. If we don't get the money to raise them, we can't stay ahead of the
settlement."

Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the Bush
administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and hurricane funding
for New Orleans. The US Senate, alarmed at the Bush administration's
insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006. But now it is too
late. Many multiples of the funding that would have saved the city now have
to be spent to rescue it.

Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush
administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not
serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to devastated
New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the US government in
modern times. By the time the Bush administration could organize any
resources for New Orleans, many more people had died and the city was in
total chaos.

Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush's Homeland Security
Secretary, Michael Chertoff, said on Thursday that the Bush administration
has done a "magnificent job."

The on-the-scene mayor of New Orleans sees it differently: "They're feeding
the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying."

"They're thinking small man, and this is a major, major deal."

It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New Orleans.
According to reports, 25% of our oil and gasoline comes through the New
Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission. Needed goods cannot be
imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an already disastrous deficit
in the balance of trade.

The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers' disposable incomes,
with dire effects on consumer spending. US economic growth will be siphoned
off into higher energy costs. American lives far from New Orleans will be
adversely affected.

The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent
government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are
rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The
powerful US military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road
to the airport--and this against an insurgency based in only 20% of the
Iraqi population. Bush's pointless war has left Washington so pressed for
money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.

The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has
squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through
hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's reputation
and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty,
he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush
has lost America's largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply. Why?
Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy
neoconservatives who have sacrificed America's interests to their insane
agenda.

The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat
and Republican alike. Now they must he held accountable. Bush and his
neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted.

What will it take for Americans to reestablish accountability in their
government? Bush has got away with lies and an illegal war of aggression,
with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the
horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the
destruction of New Orleans.

What disaster will next spring from Bush's incompetence?

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Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny
of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com