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	Earth to The President: Warnings ignored at your Peril by Andrew Sullivan The Sunday Times / The Guardian   September 4, 2005 (Sunday Times)   Like many seismic events, Katrina's true impact might take a while to absorb. The poverty, anarchy, violence, sewage, bodies, looting, death and disease that overwhelmed a great city last week made Haiti look like a paradise.   The seeming inability of the federal or city authorities to act swiftly or effectively to rescue survivors or maintain order posed fundamental questions about the competence of George W. Bush's administration and local authorities. One begins to wonder: almost four years after 9/11, are evacuation plans for cities this haphazard? Five days after a hurricane, there were still barely any troops imposing order in a huge city in the US. How on earth did this happen? And what will come of it?   There seems to me a strong chance that this calamity could be the beginning of something profound in American politics: a sense that government is broken and that someone needs to fix it.   It did, after all, fail. It failed to spend the necessary money to protect New Orleans in the first place. This disaster, after all, did not come out of the blue.   Below is a passage from the Houston Chronicle in 2001, which quoted the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the three most likely disasters to threaten the US.   They were an earthquake in San Francisco, a terrorist attack in New York city (predicted before September 11) and a hurricane hitting New Orleans.   Read this prophetic passage and weep: "The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all. In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet (6m) of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston. Economically, the toll would be shattering ... If an Allison-type storm were to strike New Orleans, or a category three storm or greater with at least 111mp/h (178km/h) winds, the results would be cataclysmic, New Orleans planners said."   Katrina was category four.   So what was done to prevent this scenario? There was indeed an attempt to rebuild and strengthen the city's defenses. But the system of government in New Orleans is byzantine in its complexity, with different levees answering to different authorities, and corruption and incompetence legendary.   More politically explosive, the Bush administration has slashed the budget for rebuilding the levees. More than a year ago, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."   To make matters worse, thousands of Louisiana National Guardsmen, who might have been able to maintain order, are deployed in the deserts of Iraq, in an increasingly unpopular war.   However, there are plenty of troops and National Guardsmen who could have responded adequately. Iraq holds only 10.2 per cent of army forces. There are 750,000 active or part-time soldiers and guardsmen in the US today. The question then becomes: where were they?   Where was the urgency to get these soldiers to rescue the poor and drowning in New Orleans, or the dying and dead in devastated Mississippi? The Vice-President was nowhere to be seen. The Secretary of State was observed shopping for shoes in New York. The President had barely returned to Washington; and had already opined that nobody had foreseen the breaching of New Orleans's levees.   Earth to Bush: the breaching of the levees had been foreseen for decades. If anyone wanted evidence that this president was completely divorced from reality, that statement was Exhibit A.   As chaos spread, the President seemed passive. He said on Friday that he was "satisfied" with the response, but not the results. What does that mean? Then he held a photo-op with Senator Trent Lott, whose house had been demolished. "The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before," Bush said. "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."   According to the official White House transcript, laughter followed that remark. Lott was Senate majority leader until a few years ago, when he was forced to resign because he said he regretted that racial desegregation had taken place in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. So while the poor and the black were drowning or dying, Bush chose to chuckle in the South. It beggared belief.   Why was martial law not imposed? That was a question nobody seemed able to answer. The mayor of New Orleans unleashed a diatribe at the lack of federal response, while Michael Chertoff, the head of homeland security, pronounced himself proud of the work of his department.   Later Bush was forced to say on television that the response to disorder in New Orleans was "not acceptable". But wasn't he ultimately responsible? In the 2000 debate with Al Gore, he had said that coping with natural disasters made him, a hands-on governor, better suited to the presidency than Gore, then vice-president. That quote began to find its way on to the talk shows and cable television last week.   As for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it soon became a joke. After CNN had shown scenes of chaos in the New Orleans Convention Center - with bodies, looters, people dying of diabetes, children lacking basic amenities, and disease spreading - the head of the agency, Michael Brown, went on television and said: "We just learnt about that today, and so I have directed that we have all available resources to get to that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water, the medical care that they need."   To add insult to injury, Bush appeared with Brown and congratulated him for doing "a heck of a job".   The President seemed oblivious to reality. One reason why this event may reverberate is exactly that disconnect. Five days after a hurricane, US citizens were still helpless across the region; and yet the president was "satisfied". More than two years after the invasion of Iraq, the road from Baghdad airport to the Green Zone is still not secure, and yet the President has pronounced himself pleased with progress.   The resonance was not lost on many Americans. There comes a point at which the central question of this presidency - its competence - overwhelms every other issue. If the President's credibility is shattered at home, how can it be restored abroad? For anyone who wants Iraq to succeed, Bush's response to Katrina can only be grim news.   Republicans know when an almighty error has been made. And last week, their president failed them.   September 5, 2005   "Bush team tries to pin blame on local officials", by Julian Borger. (The Guardian)   Bush administration officials yesterday blamed state and local officials for the delays in bringing relief to New Orleans, as the president struggled to fend off the most serious political crisis of his presidency.   His top officials continued to be pilloried on television talk shows by liberals and conservatives alike, but the White House began to show signs of an evolving strategy to prevent the relief fiasco from eclipsing the president's second term.   The outrage over the government's relief effort has hit Mr Bush at a time when he is already weakened by the gruelling war in Iraq. The threat is not only to his place in history; it could also cripple his second-term agenda, undermining his plans to privatise the social security system and to end inheritance tax.   Mr Bush also faces a much more difficult task in appointing an ideological conservative to take the supreme court seat of William Rehnquist, who died on Saturday.   The White House drew encouragement from an initial poll suggesting most Republican voters were sticking by him, and his supporters also pointed to Mr Bush's track record of recovering from mistakes. His initial response to the September 11 attacks was also sharply criticised. With that in mind, the first plank in the political recovery strategy has been to try to make up for lost time. On Saturday Mr Bush ordered 7,000 more troops to the Gulf coast.   As important as the content of the speech was its sombre tone. It was clear the White House realised that making a joke about his young hell-raising days in New Orleans in the course of a flying visit to the flooded city on Friday, was a mistake that reinforced allegations he had failed to take the disaster seriously enough.   The White House also announced yesterday that the president had cancelled public engagements, instead, he was due to return to the scene of the devastation.   The second element of the White House plan is to insist, in an echo of the September 11 attacks, that the scale of the disaster, the combination of a hurricane and the collapse of the levee system around New Orleans, could not have been foreseen.   Mr Bush was castigated for saying on Wednesday: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees". It was pointed out that there had been a string of investigations and reports in recent years which had predicted the disaster almost exactly.   Nevertheless, administration officials stuck to the line yesterday. In a string of television interviews, Michael Chertoff, the head of the homeland security department, called the situation an "ultra-catastrophe", as if the hurricane and flood were unrelated events. "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," he said.   The third element in the administration's political response has been to counter-attack against the blame directed at the federal authorities, particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and its parent body, the homeland security department.   In his weekend radio address, Mr Bush implied many of the problems had been caused by lower levels of government. The scale of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities. The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."   Unnamed White House officials, quoted in the Washington Post, directed blame at the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, for being slow to call for outside help and to declare a state of emergency. Ms Blanco, meanwhile, resisted a federal attempt to take over control of local police and national guard units - an attempt some Louisiana officials saw as a political manoeuvre that would help blame the weak response in the first week on the state.   The depth of America's polarisation could prove a bulwark preventing Mr Bush's political support from collapsing altogether. A poll by the Washington Post and ABC News on Friday night, showed that, of those questioned, 46% approved of the way the president had handled the relief efforts while 47% disapproved.   The spotlight began to turn yesterday on Michael Brown, the head of Fema, who had minimal emergency management experience before joining the agency in 2001, and had spent the previous 10 years organising horse shows for the International Arabian Horse Association. Press reports claimed he had had to leave that job because of questions about his performance.
	Nuclear Hypocrisy by Kate Hudson The Guardian   Sept 2005 (The Guardian)   Attempts by John Bolton, the new US ambassador to the UN, to strip nuclear disarmament out of the draft document for this month"s UN summit, comes as no surprise. It"s just the latest in a series of efforts by the US to change the international framework on non-proliferation. These are part of the US"s increasingly aggressive foreign policy, manifested not only in the illegal war on Iraq but in contempt for international law and multilateral treaty frameworks.   For decades, nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation have been linked through the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Nuclear weapons states have agreed to get rid of their arsenals, while in return non-nuclear weapons states have committed not to develop nuclear weapons. In recent years the US has sought to sideline or overturn the disarmament requirement, focusing on preventing more countries acquiring nuclear weapons. The US seeks to reinterpret the NPT as legitimising the possession of weapons by existing nuclear states, while using it as the justification for confrontation with states accused of proliferation.   It is not widely understood how strongly other nations feel, both about the need for nuclear disarmament and the hypocrisy of the nuclear states and their attitude of do-what-we-say-not-as-we-do. Many believe this is the type of approach that will lead other countries to proliferate. In Britain pressure for nuclear disarmament is often portrayed as an eccentric activity confined to campaigning organisations; but elsewhere in the world it is viewed not only as a treaty obligation that must be fulfilled but also, literally, as a matter of life and death.   This is ever more apparent as the US embraces the notion of "useable" nuclear weapons and the development of new weapons for use, even against non-nuclear weapons states. These are frightening developments that increase desires internationally for nuclear disarmament.   The nuclear non-proliferation treaty originated in enormous international pressure from the non-nuclear weapons states. It was made stronger in 2000 through efforts by states pressing for movement after 30 years of hollow promises. The world court in 1996 called for nuclear disarmament obligations to be met, as did the UN high level panel.   Britain"s attitude towards nuclear disarmament is shameful and flies in the face of demand for treaty compliance. It has made no progress on disarmament - despite government claims that getting rid of old systems and replacing them with more powerful ones is somehow a form of disarmament.   The Trident system will reach the end of its lifespan in the 2020s and a decision on replacement will have to be taken in this parliament. Reports suggest that a decision to replace it has already been taken, although the government denies this. No parliamentary debate has yet taken place. But what is the likely outcome? In April the prime minister stated: "We"ve got to retain our nuclear deterrent ..." This suggests that a Trident replacement is a foregone conclusion.   But his answer raises questions. Who exactly are we deterring? Of all the threats Britain faces, how many would be addressed by spending more than £15bn on a supposed nuclear deterrent? So should we assume that Tony Blair is living in a past of predictable super-power relationships and has not realised how the world has changed? No, this is clearly not the case.   A look at replacement options reveals his appeal to the familiar deterrent rhetoric as disingenuous in the extreme. The delivery system is likely to be a multi-role submarine which can carry both conventional and nuclear missiles. The warheads may well be a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield, or so-called bunker-busters, designed to hit deeply buried facilities.   The consequences of either of these weapons would be catastrophic. Far from wanting to maintain an unusable so-called deterrent, the government is going down the US path - developing new nuclear weapons for potential use.   Britain"s empty phrases in support of the NPT mean nothing when massive building work progresses apace at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, preparing for these new developments. But there is another option for a British government committed to international law and compliance with its treaty obligations, as desired by the vast majority of the international community. There is the option not to replace Trident.   (Kate Hudson, is chair of Britain"s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament)
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