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Last year Hurricane Katrina blasted the southern coast of the United States, devastating three states in what was considered the worst storm in US history.
The response of the US government to the emergency was, by any measure, a scandal of inefficiency and bureaucratic indifference.
Many people around the world were shocked to see the images of the hapless refugees left to die from lack of food and clean water in massive stadiums — images that would have been more appropriate for a poor Third World country rather than the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
The United States spent in the same year of Hurricane Katrina over $400 billion on its military; and that is without the costs of its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet it was mysteriously unable to find the funds to reinforce the barriers that would have saved the city of New Orleans from its watery death.
It is interesting to note here, that while Third World governments are moving in the direction of greater democracy, more transparency, freedom of the press and greater civil liberties, the US seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
Do they know something we don’t?
A few weeks ago the Government Accounting Office (GAO) of the US government published a damning report on the performance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The report concludes that up to 70 percent of the cases the GAO audited were riddled with serious fraud.
Recipients of FEMA funds were in many cases paid twice; funds were even paid to casinos and “massage” parlors.
Other government and press reports detail the parlous state of the city of New Orleans (the worst-hit). These reports make depressing reading; 32 percent of hospitals in the city have been reopened and with only one 24-hour emergency ward in operation in the entire city.
Two-thirds of buildings are not connected to the electricity supply and about 750,000 households have been displaced and are still not able to return.
All this would normally be a matter of little concern for us, had it not been for a small little detail. That the state of Louisiana, in its desperation, called out to the international community for aid.
Many countries around the world responded to the call and aid, both monetary and material, poured into the US.
One of those who responded with wonderful generosity was Aramco, the Saudi oil company, which donated $100 million to the US to help the victims of the hurricane.
Aramco is a state-owned company.
Since the donation was from public Saudi money, and with the alarming news that much of the aid for the victims of Katrina was lost to fraud and corruption in the US, perhaps the Saudi government should try to get to the bottom of this mess and discover what exactly the US government did with the funds that were so generously donated by the Saudi people to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
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