Asleep at the switch…

…again.



I mean, it's not like he didn't know. Sid Blumenthal's got the goods (yeah, another Salon link. Watch the ad. Better yet, subscribe. Independent liberal journalism needs all the encouragement it can get.).

In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze.

Seems to me there was another national crisis that followed one of George's willful ignorance episodes…