What happened in the Big Easy was foretold five years prior in a five-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and in the 2004 October edition of the National Geographic.
What had been published as a fictional story became fact; for it laid out the scene of the aftermath of Hurricane Kat that the world viewed in reality on TV.
Local officials and FEMA were well informed about the probability that even a slow-moving category three hurricane would cause catastrophic loss and a lot of human miseries, for 19th-century levees were not designed for that eventuality.
For years, climatologists have predicted and warned us that powerful storms will occur more frequently in the 21st century, because of rising sea levels from global warming.
The hardest-working marsh in America is the Louisiana bayou, and its health has been neglected. For three hundred years, men have built walls and levees to control that mighty force of nature, and it has wrecked havoc on New Orleans's natural defenses. From the Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any other place in the U.S.A.
Homeland Security should protect the homeland, but the War in Iraq costs American taxpayers millions a day on top of the $135 Billion the 'war on terror' began with.
The very innards of our nation are collapsing, and a government that has been commissioned to protect its citizens continues to blow it big time in support of Big Oil and the Industrial Military Complex.
"Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death." - Rev. MLK
In 2007, Project Billboard and the Center for American Progress released an analysis of the cost of the Iraq war, detailing exactly multiple projects to make America safer at home and stronger abroad.
"The "Opportunity Cost of the Iraq War" report reveals that for the cost of the Iraq war to date [2007], the United States could have undertaken 18 major projects to strengthen its security in the world and at home. Some of these include:
§ Adding two new divisions to the Army
§ Putting 100,000 new police officers on the nation's streets
§ Doubling the size of the Firefighters Grant Program
§ Doubling America's Special Operations forces
§ Undertaking significant improvements to safeguard ports
§ Funding important initiatives to safeguard loose nuclear weapons
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