Sista Gwen,
Whether or not the levee was blown up during the hurricane by the US government, it was actually blown up from 1965 to 2005.
By this I mean that after the big flood of '65, the local, state and national governments knew that the levees had to have a major overhaul/reconstruction given the constant shifting of the Mississippi and the fact that humans were eroding the surounding bayous for the sake of "development." The government officials did nothing in the past 40 years to upgrade the levees.
Engineers in and out of the government and military stated the urgency of creating Category 4 sustainable walls. Journalists (see Times-Picayune) and Scientists (see Scientific American Dec2004) wrote about the possibilities of great flooding with tremendous loss of lives.... Billions of dollars were squandered elsewhere and the few millions that did come to Louisiana got lost in the normalcy of corruption.
Hence, it was 90-95% certain that even a hurricane hitting New Orleans with 90-100mph winds would burst a levee or two.
You can rest assure that if the area was mainly made up white petty bourgeois residents and businesses, the levees would have been reinforced some time ago. All we have to do is look at the flood deterrant & draining system already in place in New Orleans: the richer whitefolk got a better support infrastructure.
...Yes, the levee was blown up! Blown up thru conscience racist/classist unprincipled corruption. This levee explosion was in deliberate slo mo: 40 years in the making... to make way for a Disneyfication of New Orleans filled with fake hypercommericialized Black Culture: Nigstalgia thru white eyes... to make way for gated communities well guarded from the floods of the Mississippi, the Poncetrain, the Black & Brown hordes that will soon be America's Majority....
In Struggle,
Sam Anderson