The following column was in this morning's Herald-Sun in Melbourne, Victoria, Oz. <br /><br />Hurricane of lies <br />Andrew Bolt <br />07sep05 <br /><br />OF COURSE, it's George Bush's fault. Why miss this chance to blame someone you already hate? <br /><br />So see them line up to kick him over the devastation of New Orleans, and the delays in bringing relief. See some so insane with loathing that they blame him even for Hurricane Katrina itself. <br />Germany's Environment Minister, Jurgen Trittin, for instance, jeered that Bush had been punished for not cutting emissions to stop global warming: <br /><br />"The American President has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina -- in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures -- can visit on his country," he gloated. Forget that records prove global warming has not made hurricanes worse. <br /><br />The Iraq branch of the al-Qaida terrorist network was just as irrational, claiming evil Bush had felt the "wrath of God". <br /><br />But seemingly more serious has been the hurricane of criticism by Bush's usual political enemies, many of whom use Katrina as a stick to belt him again over Iraq. <br /><br />They claim he was too slow to rescue Katrina's victims, just as he is said to have bungled Iraq. <br /><br />They say he had so many troops in Iraq that too few were left back home to restore order in the chaos. <br /><br />They even say he paid for his war by stripping New Orleans of cash for the levees that broke in the hurricane and drowned the city. <br /><br />And race-baiters imply he is a racist who didn't rush to save New Orleans because most people there were black. Like he doesn't much care for Iraqi Arabs either. <br /><br />But let's rewind the tape to see how New Orleans was drowned -- and check if the President really was at the evil eye of this hurricane. <br /><br />First, some background. New Orleans lies beneath sea level, squeezed between the flood-prone Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, linked to the hurricane-breeding Gulf of Mexico. <br /><br />This home of 500,000 people always was, as Scientific American warned in 2001, "a disaster waiting to happen". So in 1965, after another hurricane scare, the local, state and federal governments decided to raise the levees to protect the city from a Category 3 hurricane. <br /><br />That was the original Big Mistake -- a stupid gamble now lost. You see, Katrina was a Category 4 monster when it struck New Orleans. <br /><br />The days before she howled in are like the first bit of a disaster movie -- you know, when some wild expert tries to warn don't-bother-me officials that the apocalypse is coming? <br /><br />Katrina had already licked Florida before moving out to sea to grow still stronger. And then it lurched back -- towards New Orleans. <br /><br />By Friday, August 26, meteorologists and National Guard units were growing nervous. Army engineers deployed along the Mississippi and Louisiana coast. <br /><br />By Saturday morning, the Louisiana Governor asked Bush to declare a state of emergency, which he did, asking federal relief officials to prepare. <br /><br />Emergency teams with stockpiles of food and water were posted outside New Orleans. <br /><br />By now, hurricane buffs were posting warnings on the internet, telling citizens of New Orleans to flee. <br /><br />"If I lived in New Orleans, I would definitely leave at this point. Tonight," wrote one now-famous Notre Dame law student, Brendan Loy, on his blog on Friday. <br /><br />But one crucial man seemed not to be listening -- the (black) Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, former cable executive Ray Nagin, responsible for law and order in his city, and for its evacuation in a crisis. <br /><br />He seemed oddly determined to play it cool. <br /><br />So it was only on Saturday afternoon, less than 48 hours before Katrina was due to hit, that he finally told the people of New Orleans: "We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving." A little? <br /><br />Those who needed a shelter of "last resort" should go to the city's Superdome, he added, and "bring small quantities of food for three or four days". Small? <br /><br />Only at 5pm did he order a voluntary evacuation, even though the National Hurricane Centre was warning that Katrina was "a worst-case scenario". <br /><br />Complacency ruled. The Weather Channel even reported that tourists were happy the mayor wasn't making them leave. <br /><br />That night, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco called Nagin at home -- interrupting his dinner, he noted -- and urged him to call the Hurricane Centre for bad news about Katrina. <br /><br />Bush called, too, and appealed for a mandatory evacuation. He seemed to take the threat more seriously than did the mayor. <br /><br />But only the next morning, with Katrina less than 24 hours away, did Nagin finally order his city to be emptied. Yet he did nothing to make sure it did. <br /><br />He sent no police through the streets to sound the alarm. He did not empty the hospitals. He sent no buses to take poorer citizens from this poorest of cities -- people with no car or money to flee. In fact, more than 200 of his school buses were later found neatly parked, still in their depot, up to their useless engines in flood water. <br /><br />So when Katrina struck on Monday, 100,000 people -- largely the sickest and poorest -- were still in their doomed city, half in the Superdome and convention centre. There they found no chemical toilets, few medics, no water purification equipment, not enough police and little food or water. The 26,000 at the Superdome, for instance, had been left food just enough for 15,000 for three days. <br /><br />All this was Nagin's responsibility. Not Bush's. And it explains those pitiful scenes of stranded people begging for food. <br /><br />Meanwhile, looting broke out in a city already notorious for its black underclass and crime. Some of Nagin's ill-disciplined police joined the thieving, and some 200 others reportedly deserted, while rescuers were fired on and had to retreat. Yet the governor delayed sending her National Guards to deal with the looters, or issuing them with a shoot-to-kill policy to impose order. <br /><br />So how much of this was truly Bush's fault, in a federal system that limits his power to intervene? <br /><br />Remember that Katrina roared through an area the size of Britain, and in few other devastated places was there the lawlessness and organisational chaos seen in New Orleans. The governor of neighboring Mississippi even praised the help he got from Bush's people. <br /><br />But how about those other crimes with which Bush is charged? <br /><br />Too many soldiers in Iraq to help? There's plenty now deployed in the hurricane-hit areas to expose that lie. <br /><br />Too much money stripped from the New Orleans levees to pay for Bush's war? In fact, as Dr Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies, pointed out, New Orleans drowned when the levee broke "along a section that was just upgraded". So not Bush's fault, either. <br /><br />But, then again, do facts really count here? <br /><br />Ask only which story sells best for a Leftist media largely hostile to Bush. A story of some who-cares local official -- and a black, which is tricky -- asleep at the wheel? A story of how hard it is for even the world's greatest power to instantly cope with a colossal disaster? Of how a black underclass seems unable to look after itself? <br /><br />Or would it prefer this fable of a thick and racist president who stuffed up again, like he did in Iraq? In fact, because of Iraq? <br /><br />No contest. So you'll hear a lot more poisonous nonsense yet about Bush, but what's new about that?
