Images from New Orleans leave readers angry and sad.

Byline: The Register-Guard

New Orleans linked with Iraq

Not only have the war in Iraq and the flood in New Orleans been terrible disasters in terms of lives and property, the two disasters are connected by the terrible and tragic fiscal policies of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress.

The war in Iraq is primarily being funded through deficit spending, and secondarily by drastic cuts in domestic programs and reassigning those funds to the war. The New Orleans catastrophe is one result, made worse by the U.S. government's failure to fund the already-identified need for levee build-up and wetlands repair and preservation, by tax cuts that take away money for so-called discretionary funding, and by the unavailability of the National Guard's personnel and equipment - which are in Iraq instead. All these things severely compromised both disaster protection and a rapid, effective emergency response to Katrina's disaster.

Let's remember this when it comes time to vote.

DAVID GILMARTIN

Eugene

Humans connected to nature

As my heart goes out to those coping with the Katrina disaster, I also look for what is to be learned here. Another way to honor those who have lost everything is to learn the lessons in this disaster.

Thus, I am reminded of humankind's culpability in this tragedy. This "act of nature" need not have been so devastating. Examples? For years, the marshland of the Gulf Coast has been disappearing to development and human demand for it. Trees to protect from winds and to act as a depository for run-off water were not there when needed.

Another fact: Four years ago, Congress cut funds that would have been used to strengthen flood control and levees in New Orleans.

My heart aches for the losses of life, property and security. My heart also aches for our insensitivity to the connectedness of humankind and nature. May we please learn!

JUDY MOSELEY

Eugene

Blacks loot, whites scavenge 

Oh, I get it. When black people do it, it's called "looting." When white people do it, it's called "scavenging." Silly me, I thought they were all just trying to survive.

R.L. McCALL

Eugene

Victims need immediate help

I am sure that getting angry doesn't help, but I am to my limit of seeing these horrific photographs and reading the tragic stories. When are those unfortunate victims going to get some help?

Can any of us imagine what it's like to live through a disaster like that? No drinkable water, no sewer system, no food and no electricity, just for starters. The people are angry. Wouldn't you be angry?

I don't want to believe that our government is this ill-prepared to help its citizens survive a natural disaster. If I were to read a story about a family trapped in a partially submerged vehicle for four days waiting for someone to rescue them, this family would be telling their story on Oprah. The story of their amazing survival.

Thousands of people are trapped in the South. It looks as though it's up to us to help them. We need to get busy. This isn't the time for judging, it's the time to help.

GRACE HAMILTON

Eugene

Budget priorities questionable

I think our one-party government owes both the tens of thousands of hurricane victims and the U.S. taxpayers an explanation. How do those in charge of the well-being of our citizens justify cutting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans area budget by about $70 million - to nearly half the amount requested, a request that included bolstering the since-failed levees - and then turn around and appropriate $229 million for Alaska's "Don Young Bridge to Nowhere"?

KENNETH JANOWSKI

Florence

We could face disaster here

There, but for the grace of God, go the rest of us. Believe it. If we had had a Richter Scale 9 earthquake off the coast of Newport and a resulting tsunami, or if Mount Hood erupted, leaving the bridges gone, the highways gone, rail service gone, food supplies at a minimum and hundreds if not thousands dead, we would be experiencing the same things as southern Louisiana. If not worse.

We are not prepared. But not for lack of serious intent. No matter how much our governor, senators and representatives and emergency preparedness people have begged, not only have we not been given any money - except for anti-terrorism training - we, like southern Louisiana, have had emergency contingency plans shriveled to almost nonexistence.

Our National Guard and all its equipment are fighting in Iraq. We, too, would have to depend on regular military - the military! - and we are a Democratic state. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

ANN FILLMORE

Reedsport

Would bombing speed relief?

Maybe we could bomb and occupy the Gulf Coast in order to fix it, as we did Vietnam and Iraq.

HENRY DIZNEY

Eugene

What must conservatives think?

It can't be easy being a conservative these days. Their man, President George Walker Bush, presides over the most radically reckless administration this great nation has ever witnessed, playing fast and loose with our military, our tax dollars and our environmental health.

As the bathtub that is New Orleans drowns in foul-smelling toxic stew, its local newspaper, The Times-Picayune, laments, "We told you so." For more than a year, that paper ran editorials decrying the Bush administration's diversion of money earmarked for New Orleans' levees and hurricane preparedness into funding our oil president's war of choice in Iraq. The funding cuts forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to delay strengthening the earthen barriers that subside a foot or more each year - the ones that failed the night of Aug. 29, leaving the Big Easy no match for the Big Katrina.

New Orleans descended into chaos and squalor. Short on troops for his war, Bush brazenly snatched National Guard soldiers - 3,000 from Louisiana and 4,000 from Mississippi currently serve in Iraq, along with their helicopters - rendering them unavailable while disaster ravages their states.

What must conservatives think as Islamic parties build a theocracy in southern Iraq and nestle closer to Iran, financed with 1,800 American lives and 300 billion of our tax dollars, as our fellow Americans lack the relief and order that a fraction of the war's squandered resources could have provided?

DALE STURDAVANT

Eugene

Iraq diverted U.S. spending

If the Army Corps of Engineers had spent as much on civil engineering projects on the Mississippi as it has spent on the Tigris and Euphrates for the past two years, New Orleans would be intact.

ROB SPOONER

Florence

Don't ignore global warming

While Hurricane Katrina's damage is partly a natural disaster, it has man-made dimensions as well.

Some have already noticed one key role played by the Bush administration, as funds that had been requested to build up levees were diverted instead to the hugely unnecessary Iraq war. While this lack of foresight is justifiably criticized, it pales in comparison to the failure to do anything about global warming.

Of course, there were hurricanes, even very severe ones, before global warming, and there is no way to prove that such warming caused Katrina's ferocity. But we do know that on average, global warming is likely to increase the severity of tropical storms, and the severity of such storms does appear to be increasing - by an average of 50 percent in intensity and duration since the 1970s.

If a foreign army were attacking the United States, I doubt we would exonerate those who gave arms to the enemy just because we could not prove that specific arms were used in a specific attack. It would be enough to know that donating arms to the enemy was likely to hurt us at some point. Global warming is a threat to the United States and to the world; President Bush should be fighting it instead of providing tax breaks to oil companies and proposing laws to stop states from requiring fuel-efficient vehicles.

Aiding the enemy has always been called treachery, and there is no reason to use a different word in this case.

RON UNGER

Eugene