Nor do I. If we had known the NO situation was a very high probability we could have found a way to fund both and short something else. At the time it was absolutely necessary to fund the war and at the time, we knew that NO had survived many hurricanes in the past. It seemed like a reasonable risk, especially if the article is correct and we had already allocated $430 mil to that effort.
You are one hundred percent right! (And I apologize for jumping the gun earlier...no excuses for doing so but I am surrounded by too many Lieberals where I work)