334 a short history of the united states
money. By 2006 over $ 300 billion had been spent in prosecuting the
war. And Bush kept asking for additional supplements.
Further mistakes by the Bush administration followed. A contract,
approved for a company in Dubai owned by the United Arab Emirates
to operate American seaports, set off a pop ular protest. Even Republi-
can members of Congress expressed outrage. Bush had no choice but to
quash the arrangement—and he did so on March 10 , 2006. An even
worse disaster for the administration developed on August 29 , 2005 ,
when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast and devastated
the region. New Orleans was especially hard-hit because the storm
breached the levees holding back the Mississippi River and water poured
through the city, destroying homes and drowning thousands of people.
The low-lying districts where poor blacks lived took the heaviest blow.
For days stranded people stood on the roofs of their devastated homes
and held up signs that read “Help.” Thousands fled the city. Many of
the poorest inhabitants who had no way of escaping were crowded into
the Superdome, where the facilities could not keep up with demand.
The administration failed to respond adequately: FEMA was especially
criticized for its failure to appreciate how serious the problem had be-
come and how inadequate its attempts to deal with the situation.
Other scandals surfaced. Jack Abramoff, a well-heeled lobbyist who
had close ties to the Republican leadership, was indicted and pleaded
guilty to conspiracy to corrupt public officials, mail fraud, and tax eva-
sion. He named congressmen who had aided him in his schemes and
accepted bribes, free golf trips to Scotland, and other gratuities. Tom
DeLay, the House majority leader from Texas, was indicted for his in-
volvement in the Texas gerrymandering scheme, which netted the Re-
publicans additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. He
was forced to give up his leadership position, and he subsequently re-
signed from the House. Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a
Republican from California, went to prison for accepting millions in
bribes; and Mark Foley, a Republican representative from Florida, was
forced to resign because of improper messages he sent to former male
pages in the House. The Vice President’s chief of staff, I. Lewis
(Scooter) Libby, was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of
justice in a case growing out of the unlawful disclosure of a CIA agent
in order to penalize critics of the Iraq war. He was found guilty of four