"They're trying to wash us away...."

As many feared, the rains and storm surge from Hurricane Rita are flooding New Orleans again:

In New Orleans, water poured through gaps in the Industrial Canal levee, which engineers had tried to repair after Katrina's floodwaters left 80 percent of the city under water. The rushing water spilled east into St. Bernard Parish, where ducks swam down Judge Perez Drive.

The storm surge was both stronger and earlier than expected, apparently coming through waterways southeast of the city, said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Army Corps of Engineers' district chief in New Orleans. Water poured over piles of gravel and sandbags in the damaged Industrial Canal levee despite efforts to build it up.

"We believed the 8-foot elevation was sufficient" to protect the Ninth Ward, Wagenaar said. (from CNN.com/AP)

Eight feet of gravel and sandbags. To repair a broken levee that should have been properly repaired and maintained a long damn time ago. The madness of King George and his court:

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cited a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the three most likely U.S. disasters. Nevertheless, by 2004 the Bush administration had cut funding to the corps' New Orleans district by more than 80 percent.... Earlier this year, the Louisiana congressional delegation got Congress to provide about $60 million for ?ood protection for the city. But the Bush administration reduced that ?gure to $10.4 million.... While the Bush administration was cutting funding to strengthen protective dikes and levees, the state's bipartisan congressional delegation was also working to secure money for the restoration of its coastal wetlands to buffer the impacts of storm surges. Louisiana officials estimated this effort could cost $14 billion, but the lawmakers managed to secure only a tiny fraction -- $570 million over four years, according to The Times-Picayune. The requested multiyear, $14 billion, appropriation was all but erased from the administration's energy bill....

So in order to save in the short term for disaster prevention, the administration's lack of planning has yielded what will likely top $100 billion in damages -- and most of it uninsured. (from Alternet)

At least they finally managed to get the people out of there. Or so I assume, given that the media are reporting on ducks rather than bodies swimming down New Orleans' thoroughfares. I can't imagine Karl Rove giving the order to stifle the real story.