New Orleans, El Toro
New Orleans had a lifeline, a levy system. Many areas of New Orleans were below sea level and this levy system protected New Orleans from being flooded by water from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.
Louisiana politicians, the city, state officials and the Army Corps of Engineers all knew that the levy system could withstand a category 3 hurricane but not a category 4 or 5. But they did nothing to avert a disaster.
On Aug. 29, a category 4 hurricane hit the New Orleans area. As everyone knew would happen, the New Orleans levy system failed, the city was flooded and the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina was amplified by a factor of 10-plus.
Orange County has a lifeline also, the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.
El Toro has two 10,000-foot runways, the only runways in the county where large aircraft could land to assist in relief operations during a major natural disaster.
We know that there is a possibility of having at least two types of major natural disasters here in OC. We routinely have earthquakes but fortunately in recent centuries we have not had a major killer earthquake, which everyone knows is inevitable. The other type of major natural disaster and possibly the scariest and deadliest is wild fire.
In October 1993 a wild fire struck the county destroying almost 400 homes. We were fortunate that the winds stopped or practically the whole west portion of the county could have been destroyed. If there had been a fleet of 15 or 20 water-dropping planes and helicopters based at El Toro that would have immediately attacked the fire, possibly no structures would have been lost.
Currently there are more than 100,000 acres of parks and wilderness areas in southern OC. Unfortunately, our politicians and developers have convinced the people that we need to destroy our lifeline, the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, and in its place build yet another park.
Bill Turner
Costa Mesa
Novak, Leaks
Re Ed St. Armour’s Aug. 29 letter criticizing Bob Novak:
Isn’t it funny to hear from a Democrat about something that may or may not have actually happened?
Let’s ask Mr. Ed about what Sandy Berger actually did. I would call that treason.
Until you Democrats start winning elections, you don’t have much to laugh about, do you?
Bill Remmel
Anaheim
I was shocked when Valerie Plame, who was “outed” in the press as being a CIA operative, allowed herself to be photographed for a Vanity Fair article. Of course, she was wearing large sunglasses and a very glamorous headscarf as a disguise.
I don’t know about you, but if I feared for my life I doubt I would let a popular magazine photograph me sitting next to my very public ambassador husband in our classic automobile parked in front of our house while the caption mentions the city and the state of the my residence.
I can’t recall how many reports were leaked out of the CIA since the change in the leadership of that organization this past year.
Arthritis has set into the joints of a once powerful agency responsible for our national security. Their job was never to be invited to the right cocktail parties in Washington, D.C., or become cover girls for Vanity Fair, but to carry out the sometimes impossible task of finding information around the world that might save us from events such as Sept. 11, 2001.
On the same note, the Pentagon is filled with human beings who will probably always be more political than they should be.
While Rumsfeld is trying heroically to clean up the Pentagon mess, the moaning and creaking of the fossilized has-beens is deafening. The leaks of any negative analysis drips straight to the New York Times from some anonymous source on a daily basis.
In the case of the CIA, I would like to see the heads roll of anyone found leaking any kind of information, even a requisition for toilet paper! There is no room for self-centered imbeciles who care only for their own comfort to be left in charge of our national security.
I feel even more strongly regarding Pentagon leakers. The members of our military deserve better than these anonymous, self-interested cowards.
Barbara Johnson
Cowan Heights
