The Hiller Instinct: Hiller Instinct: Bush’s new war

Make no mistake: we're now in another war, a war against Mother Nature, and while Katrina's death toll is expected to be in the thousands, its devastation is already being compared to an atomic bomb blast in World War II that killed as many 200,000 people.

"I can only imagine this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago," Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) said.

But the war Katrina looks like most is the war in Iraq.

On the streets, there's lawlessness here, and there… desperate, hungry refugees in both places and a lack of control that creates chaos.

So how can you tell whether these National Guard troops are headed to Mississippi or to the Middle East when you can't even be sure whether the President is talking about Baghdad or the Bayou?

"The challenges that we face on the ground are unprecedented," Bush said.

And just as the president's truthfulness about why we're in Iraq has been questioned, so is his claim now the damage from Katrina couldn't be avoided.

"I don't think anyone anticipated a breach of the levees, they did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached," Bush said.

But there are several reports that Bush cut funding for fixing the levees because of the rising costs of the war in Iraq, and a former mayor of New Orleans says the collapse was expected.

"I think there's been a fight for years for appropriations not only for the levee system, but also for the drainage system. And one has to wonder if there had there been more investments would have occurred," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Moriel said.

What he says must occur now cements Katrina's link with the war on terror:

"We need an effort of 9/11 proportions," Moriel said.

The President apparently agrees, saying, "New Orleans is more devastated than New York was."

Remember those words, because the foundation of his political success is as a commander-in-chief, and now ground zero may be moving from the Big Apple to the Big Easy.

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