A somber Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, spoke this morning about the devastation currently facing his city.

"We probably have 80 percent of our city underwater," he said during a news report with television station WWL. "With some sections of our city, the water is as deep as twenty feet. We have many of our residents still trapped on their roofs... both airports are underwater. The twin spans in New Orleans East have been totally destroyed. They're gone.

"We have three huge boats that have run aground. We have an oil tanker that is also run aground and is leaking oil. The yacht club on the lake has burned totally and is destroyed.

"We have houses that have literally been picked up off of their foundations and moved."

It's hard to truly understand the destruction Hurricane Katrina is wreaking on the United States from the sunny confines of California, but having lived through the Loma Prieta earthquake — a 7.1 monster that laid waste to a fair amount of San Francisco and its neighboring cities — I share the feelings of loss and desperation that come paired with natural catastrophe.

When a relative goes missing for even an hour, fear mounts and scenarios play out in your head. I know. When the earthquake struck, I was alone for hours while my family made their way home through unimaginable traffic. No electricity, shattered glass and dishware everywhere. It was a nightmare for a twelve-year-old boy.

Yet the situation in Lousiana is even more dire. Storm modelers are predicting Katrina could cost insurers alone a record $25 billion, making it the most expensive hurricane ever. And those figures don't factor in the crippling effect the storm has had on the Mississippi River or the various ports destroyed along the Gulf of Mexico, either. Collapsed bridges and capsized ships have severed New Orleans' gateway to Middle America.

What I find most troubling about the devastation, however, is that some of it was preventable. In February of this year, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers announced it had "identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district." Projects that would strengthen infrastructure for storms such as the one bearing down on the United States right now. Projects that would bolster New Orleans from hurricanes and flooding.

Projects that were never enacted because of President Bush's budget cuts.

That's right. Our federal government has once again placed blowing up a foreign country higher on the priority list than keeping our own country from falling apart. And as we have sown the wind, so shall we reap the whirlwind.

I am fed up with the money pit that is Iraq. I was never a proponent of war, and any dollar spent overseas on destruction and carnage is better spent within our borders building industry, education, technology and infrastructure. Imagine if the billion dollars we spend weekly to maintain our armed forces abroad were devoted to feeding the poor or teaching children in new schools? Imagine if the money spent to secure oil fields outside Baghdad was turned towards researching alternative fuel solutions?

I'm starting to sound like John Lennon.

New Orleans needed $65 million in 2005 to complete projects that would save billions in the long run. Those billions in relief will now come from taxpayer pockets. And the cuts get deeper in the next fiscal year. In 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will face a $71.2 million reduction in federal funding, the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district.

These amounts are drops in the bucket in comparison to the monies financing the war machine. Ironically, oil refineries that would have benefited from the upgrades vetoed by President Bush are now shut down, so we are even more dependant on foreign oil than before. Grease up the Humvees, it's time to blow up some Iranian pipelines!

Twice this year President Bush has pushed through cutbacks that all but wrote the obituary for New Orleans. He has neglected his own nation to the point of ruin yet cares only for his chess match in the Middle East. In case you haven't put it together, the message is clear.

We are alone. We cannot expect the federal government to help us in any capacity that does not involve conquest. Simple matters like home ownership and protection are a thing of the past. The trifle of income we send to Washington, D.C. in the guise of taxation does not benefit us one iota. Our roads and schools crumble while the president jokingly looks under tables and podiums for the weapons of mass destruction his advisors concocted as a means to an end.

The people of New Orleans cannot even count on their own National Guardsmen for assistance. More than 3,000 of Lousiana's 256th Brigade are presently overseas fighting Bush's illegal war and can only watch their homes gradually succumb to Mother Nature on television. Their combined manpower and equipment could benefit the people of Louisiana greatly; as it is, they are simply another reminder of our resources being squandered.

Will the reality of Katrina resonate with Southerners coping without food or shelter because of budget cutbacks? I hope so. The list of malfeasance and improper spending by Bush is enormous, but as with Cindy Sheehan, the struggle is a lot more personal when you attach it to the face of someone destroyed by a political agenda.

Bush may try to play the hero and make wild promises of restoring everything to its previous glory. If and when he does, please remind those affected that his short-sightedness played a part in their home's destruction.

My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone currently feeling like a frightened twelve-year-old waiting for the shaking to stop. It'll be okay.

Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.