I have never known anyone from The Army Core of Engineer’s but I used to know a lot of CBs. Construction Battalion, they had a training camp in the Los Padres National Forest area not far from where I went camping every Summer. The guys were fantastic.

My Jeep broke down way far off the beaten trail and miles up a fire trail. Both the starter switch and the clutch plate. Fortunately a couple hours later two deputies came driving up looking for some missing hikers. They were not equipped to tow me out but sent the CBs to get us.

The CBs came back about an hour later with a weapons carrier and towed us back to camp, dropped us off and took the Jeep to their compound. They made a clutch plate from scrap metal, told me not to shut off the ignition unless I was on a hill and could get a running start on the way home, a 9 hour drive. They told me the plate would get me home and it did. I left the ignition on when I got home, went into the house to call the Jeep mechanic, unhooked my trailer, drove two blocks and had to be towed the rest of the way. When those CBs said it would get me home, that is exactly what they meant. LOL They all got a kick out of it when I wrote and told them what happened and for several years after I was invited to their yearly ball which was held in the area I lived until I moved far away and lost contact. It was my experience that the CBs took extreme pride in their ability to live up to their “can do” reputation and I have seen first hand the efficiency of The Army Core of Engineer’s when I lived in another country, although it was not on as personal level as I had with the CBs. Both are expert in doing the impossible with whatever they have or can scrounge up, not only their lives but the lives of their comrades in arms depend on it!

Those men and women know how to get things done. They came out to our reservation in the late 90s to install basic services after we were denied by the utility companies. Phone and electicity lines were built in a circle around us so that no competitors could realisticly get through. If your spouse had a heart attack you would have to drive 20 miles to get to a phone, so we sued and the Gov’t agreed.

The Army Core of Engineer’s were hardcore highly trained building-machines who completed all the work in 2 weeks when private companies claimed it would take years. I’m a professional builder myself and the ACoE are who I would trust with life or death projects.

There are lots of major cities around the world that are below sea level and rely on levees. Tell me which ones are entrusted to inefficient private companies.

Kerry’s right about government interference in Katrina recovery efforts. My mom was a Red Cross volunteer who was put in charge of her area because of her organizational experience. It was chaos and lots of food and water were turned away. I’m not sure what Bush’s FEMA was doing, but its priority was not saving lives.

The cheney/bush admin was warned about the levees and as usual they ignored anything that did not pertain to funding their oil war.

Now just where do YOU think the funding for levee building and upkeep comes from, little green men from space?

The cheney/bush admin does not ALLOW bidding for contracts but hands them to their thieving, criminal cronies. I thought everyone knew that by now.

“The sign the Katrina people should have been holding up would read: “Help me! Get the federal governmnet out of my life!”

Your statement above is about as cold and insensitive as anything I have heard come out of the mouth of old mama Bush and her “beautiful mind”!

“grimgold , The government cut funding for upkeep on the dams in New Orleans, therefore they were not up to the standards they should have been. The government had been warned but ignored it. I hold the Cheney/Bush incompetent dictatorship responsible for the tragic, catastrophic results that followed.”

The fact is that the federal govt did not properly build those levees in the first place, then ignored the warniings. It is not GW and Cheney that are at fault here, no matter how much you cherish any excuse to pound them. The fault lies with the Army Corps Of Engineers years before the GW administration.
What should have happened is that the levees projects be put out for competitive bid to private enterprise, then built. This way the chances are far greater it would have been done properly. The Federal Government should get out of the levee building business entirely, especially as we have seen the results of their work.
Our govt as presently structured is obviously the most wasteful, dishonest way to do almost anything.
The sign the Katrina people should have been holding up would read: “Help me! Get the federal governmnet out of my life!”
Grimgold

For that matter, both Mother Jones [3] and Barbara Ehrenreich [4] have covered Hillary’s connection to a secretive right-wing Christian group inWashington known as The Family or The Fellowship run by Doug Coe.

Hillary’s connection to The Family is more worrisome to me than Obama’s to his church.

[1] Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,278012,00.html
[2] http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/334482.aspx
[3] http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html
[4] http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich