August 30, 2007 at 08:46:31 Sentinels, Hurricane Kat and Iraq by Eileen Fleming www.opednews.com

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If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break
If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break,
Some people are still sleeping
Some people ARE WIDE AWAKE.-Bob Dylan 2006 Modern Times   

It has been two years since Hurricane Katrina blew in and exposed that the empire has no clothes.  What happened in the Big Easy was foretold five years ago in a five-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. 

It also was foretold in the 2004 October edition of the National Geographic, which  published a fictional story that became fact; for it  laid out the scene of Hurricane Kat in incredible detail, that America and 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 two million 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   

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, 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

"More could be done to better secure or eliminate nuclear weapons, material and technology to prevent terrorists from developing and exploding nuclear or dirty bombs….These are just a few proposals that would have represented a better investment in America's security than the…Iraq "war of choice." http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/08/b171440.html 

No thinking person disputes the oppressive nature of Saddam Hussein's regime and also understands that Iraq was not involved in the planning or execution of the September 11 attacks and Iraq did not have a collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaida.

American army bases in Afghanistan and Iraq are based  all along the oil piple line and we the people have a homeland that is under-funded. Our sister and brother citizens on the Gulf Coast have been forgotten; for out of sight is out of mind.

But, redemption is always possible and the good news is that on June 20, 2007, Sen. Chris Dodd [D-CT.] sponsored S. 1668: Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act of 2007, a senate bill with a heart for the poor and needy Americans on the Gulf Coast. This bill will require the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to allow specified uses by Louisiana of certain funds under the Road Home Program and sets a deadline for the Housing Authority of New Orleans to make a certain number of dwelling units available for occupancy among many other things to benefit those still suffering the aftermath of Hurricane Kat.  

Most every heart in America was broken as we witnessed the horror of our sister and brother citizens on roof tops and in squalor after the levees broke. Hearts can turn cold and hard when we forget to remember what had once pierced them open, but redemption is always available and we the people can do something.  

Robert Greenwald's video of New Orleans today in which you can see and hear American's say that they have been forgotten and are still suffering because the conventional 'wisdom' increases the Defense budget but forgets to remember that we are to be our brother's keepers and what we should be doing is what we want done unto us.  

DO SOMETHING: Let your heart break open again and sign the petition in support of Senator Dodd's recovery act to assist the Gulf Coast region in rebuilding the infrastructure that was lost after Hurricane Katrina and Rita wrecked havoc:
    http://whenthesaints.org/  

If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break
If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break,
Some people are still sleeping
Some people ARE WIDE AWAKE.

Eileen is the Reporter and Editor of
wearewideawake.org

Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"

She has been to Israel Palestine five times since June 2005.

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