Promises and Lies

Looking around New Orleans now, four months after Hurricane Katrina battered it, is a feats for the eyes. Dark, 2/3 empty of people, ravaged....it's like a biblical city that was "laid to waste" by God. But God didn't destroy New Orleans. Nature helped and man failed to build adequate levees and drainage pumps to protect it. That is, the federal government has assaulted this unique city of mine by its negligence and neglect.
It has been disclosed that the Corps of Engineers, the government agency in charge of building the levees that protect us (we are 6 feet below sea level and surrounded by water), knowingly built inadequate levees and failed to inspect properly those that were built. We read admissions and disclosures that these levees were far short of the height underground needed to ensure they would not break and of stories of inflated contracts given by the Corps of Engineers to politically positioned companies who had not the engineering skill to build them. And now my least favorite president's, George Bush, empty promises after the storm (his speeches to the nation seem to have been vote appeals, not real promises to help us) to spend "whatever it takes to build adequate levees" was just another Bush administration lie.
He does nothing and has backed off his promise. Bush is maddeningly incompetent and immoral. If I may borrow from The Greek philosopher Euripedes, "Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad." Well, Bush is not God, but he is driving us mad. And Congress his abandoned New Orleans too. The issue of hurricane relief and of rebuilding the city is no longer the "sexy" issue it was when in the headlines. Now we are being told our levees will only be rebuilt to "the level before the storm".
This congress is maddening us too. But our insanity is not an internal illness. It is imposed by the neglect our own government (though no one here believes the Bush administration is capable of fair and rational behavior). We are now a maddened city wrapped in confusion, uncertainty, fear and anger..oh, so much anger at the betrayal and neglect we have had hoisted on us. The hurricane was nothing compared to the Bush administration and Congresses scorn. So I guess it truly is a Greek tragedy.
New Orleans is dead. Long may it be remembered by those who once new and loved it. And may a Biblical plague fall on those who buried us.