---
title: 'What Went Wrong'
date: '2005-09-01T07:26:04-04:00'
permalink: /what-went-wrong/
tags:
    - politics
---

Many, many things, but I’ll only name three:

10,000 members of the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama National Guards are in Iraq, and so are [unable](http://abc26.trb.com/news/natguard08012005,0,4504131.story?coll=wgno-news-1) to [mobilize](http://www.swingstateproject.com/2005/08/katrina_and_the.php) for this domestic crisis.

[Coastal erosion](http://web.naplesnews.com/03/10/naples/e1666a.htm) has resulted in the reduction of the buffer between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico from 150 miles of marshland to 60 miles; because of this, hurricanes have less time to lose strength over land before striking the city. Much of this erosion is due to offshore drilling, as well as to the [rising seas](http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2002/2002-08-10-la-sinking.htm) that are resulting from global warming.

The budget for shoring up and protecting New Orleans’s levee system was [slashed](http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313) to almost nothing in 2003, as the administration looked for ways to fund the war in Iraq.