Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Reprinted from an email to Andrew Sullivan:

"I've worked closely with Corps personnel for 6 years in various scientific and regulatory capacities on wetlands issues. While the Corps is often maligned by environmentalists, I will be the first to defend the professionalism, commitment and skill of their regulatory field staff.
The Corps, however, is Army - the institutional culture is one of top-down control and damn-the-torpedoes, and a deeply-ingrained instinct against criticising the chain of command. In an email yesterday that eventually ended up on Wonkette, I predicted that they would be good soldiers and insulate Bush against charges that the levees weren't finished, and indeed I woke up to Al Naomi saying just that on NPR. And General Strock from HQ had to be brought in to do the real damage control: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. "Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place." (from Chi Trib).
But there are really TWO questions that must be answered:

1) Was the levee complete and at design spec?

2) Would a design-spec levee have withstood Katrina?

1) The truth is that short of a whistleblower, we may never know the condition of that levee on 8/29. My source on its inadequate condition isn't solid enough. But I know the following things:

a) You don't finish levees and walk away. They need regular maintenance - even when you haven't built them on dewatered organic soils that settle every year.

b) A District that had just taken a one-year budget cut of $71 million will have had to make some very hard choices about whether maintenance on this particular levee fell (in Corps parlance) "above the line - priority" or "below the line - optional". Their SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) guidance might tell us, but somebody needs to get a FOIA cookin' on this right now.

c) The question of levee adequacy breaks down at least into "was it at spec height?" [yes!] and "was it structurally sound to spec?" [oops!]. Because of the nature of the levee failure (not overtopped, but burst), watch for Corp HQ to focus on the first question (which pins the deaths on nature), and ignore the second (which might pin the deaths on budget decisions).

2) Over the coming days, the Corps' message will be this: "Katrina was greater than the design storm for this levee." This is at least an open question - purportedly the levees were designed to withstand a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4 at landfall, presenting her weak side to the levees at a distance of some 40-50 miles. The question appears debatable on its technical merits, and Strock's facile answer is far too politically expedient a conclusion to take at face value from Corps HQ. I have seen them fall on their sword for Presidents before, and the need has never been greater.

To sum up: Gen. Strock is asking us to accept that the Army Corps could maintain the structural integrity of every last mile of levee built on subsiding soils in a District that had taken a $71 million budget cut in one year. AND that they would admit it if they hadn't, when the reputation of the President is at stake. All my experience rejects both propositions."

Atrox and I were discussing this over lunch the other day...

I have always been a fan of the Corps. I think one of our great failures in Iraq has been the fact that Rumsfeld (and to a lesser extent Cheney and Christopher before him ) has continually gutted it. The fact of the matter is, back to Caesar, great nations use their armies to "build roads" when they aren't fighting. This allows you to maintain a large standing army while getting peacetime benefits from it, and the the wake of the New Deal and WW2 for things like TVA and most of our hydrology management in this country we have the ACoE to thank.

Moreover, the outsourcing of logistics and supply to Halliburton and other contractors has let to an absolute rape of our treasury, nevermind the fact that we don't have a trained motivated military to keep the lights on in Baghdad and maintain the oil pielines in the face of hostile conditions.

Our Army, our Air Force, our Navy are, yes, the most efficient, deadly war machine in the world. The problem is we need more than just a deadly war machine. We need a superb civil and environmental engineering force in peacetime. We need a nation building force in the aftermath of war. We need a humanitarian assistance organization in the face of a tsunami or a hurricane. We need peacekeeping force in the face of genocides and escalating civil wars. The Corps and the SeaBees are that force, and they have been neglected for far too long.

Moreover, I can't help but read, "The Corps, however, is Army - the institutional culture is one of top-down control and damn-the-torpedoes, and a deeply-ingrained instinct against criticising the chain of command," and think about Zinni, Shinseki and all the other Generals who have come out against administration "facts" and tactics and wonder about this. I believe -- and this is a matter of faith that really stems from simply knowing the military personnel I have known -- that our Armed Forces are a professional and thoughtful bunch. Moreover, I know what happens to people in the military who actually do speak up. It is similar to EPA, FDA, or budgetary personnel.

UPDATE:

Get this:

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

KBR was assigned the work under a “construction capabilities� contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers’ effort to repair New Orleans’ levees.

Houston Chronicle