The blame game for the massive failures that left over 1,000 (and still counting) dead has targeted the environmental movement. A special report from the Center for Progressive Reform demolishes the arguments in that blame game. The Army Corps of Engineers had opted to pursue one of two options for levee construction before being sued for having failed to conduct an environmental assessment -- which, when the Corps finally conducted it and other analyses, inspired the Corps to choose the other option. The CPR report concludes with this: The right wing attempt to blame the environmentalists, while politically convenient, is completely rebutted by the facts. It is beyond dispute that the EIS litigation would have only temporarily delayed the Corps from pursuing the [one of two levee construction options that it had been considering -- an option that the Corps ultimately decided not to pursue]. We also know that the Corps decided to switch to the [second] option because it believed that it was the better policy. This switch also responded to broad-scale local public opposition to the [first] option. In any case, the [first] option would not have prevented the flooding in New Orleans even if it had been completed. Neither . . . option was designed to protect New Orleans from more than a category 3 hurricane. Moreover, the [first] option, had it been completed, would not have stopped the flooding that occurred along the ship canal. What goes without saying is that even if the delay from the lawsuit had any consequence for the devastation of Katrina, the fault still would lie with a federal government failure to do what it was supposed to do under the law.