Are we on our own?

Of course, no matter what the Federal Governments reaction to the New Orleans crises would be, Bush would still have his supporters, but whether or not you think the Government Bush built responded fast enough, well enough or inadequately, you have to ask yourself: what if this had been a terrorist attack?

We have been assured ever since Bush launched the Baghdad Crusade that we retained enough troops at home to protect us. We have appropriated enormous sums of money for Homeland Security; we have permitted intrusions on our personal liberty all in the name of making our country safer.

We can see the results. Huge amounts of money are unaccounted for. Much of it has been withheld from port cities and sent to places like Wyoming, some of it disappeared into brand new corporations that promptly went out of business and some of it went to political friends of the administration. None of it seems to have gone toward anything that has increased national security.

Leaving aside the question of whether the Army Corps of Engineers should have completed the levee repairs and upgrades, or whether FEMA should have had its abilities diminished, the question remains. If we cannot get troops on the ground in an American city even when we have several days warning, if we cannot get medical facilities dispatched or food and water distributed, then how could we have dealt with a chemical/biological attack? What could we have done about a dirty bomb? What about a nuke on a container ship?

New Orleans would have had at least half a million people there, since there could have been no opportunity for evacuation. The chaos we now see could have been many times worse. The death toll would be enormous.

My conclusion is that hundreds of thousands might have died because the Government has placed its resources elsewhere and because the government simply has no plan. My conclusion is that we are vastly more vulnerable than ever before and now our enemies know it. They must be pleased to hear that Hastert and the Radio dittoheads are willing to write the city off. Is it really more important to protect Iraq against the Theocracy they want than to protect our own cities, our own seaports, our own people?

The Bush administration has effectively privatized national security, which is a polite way to say that we are on our own.