Cripes, pull the other one.
From your post:
...but 2-3 years ago, things started to go wrong. Likely because the cost of the Iraq war, finding dried up. By 2005, there was some 200 million dollars of projects not done due to lack of funding.
...(interestingly, this Nat. Geographic piece predicts what came to pass very accurately, and also shows how the federal government, mainly Bush, wasted an opportunity to prepare for it)
...But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent."
..."Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain."