'War on terror diverted US resources from disaster prevention'

"The most recent effects of these diversions of funding have been seen in the unfolding tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the surrounding area," said Erica Frank from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

"Had there been more bodies on the ground, there would have been fewer deaths. But 7,000 National Guards from Louisiana and Mississippi are deployed in Iraq," she said.

In June 2004, southern Louisia-na's emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the local Time Picayune newspaper that federal funds appeared to have been diverted instead of paying for repairs the state's dykes, designed to protect the low-lying region from flooding.

"Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us," he wrote at the time.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

Had the thousands of the National Guard deployed in Iraq instead been at home, Frank said, they would have been on hand to help prevent the disaster, to have rescued those trapped, contained the human losses and helped survivors.