Reuters: Hurricane Gustav lashed the Louisiana coast on Monday with pounding rain and heavy winds, posing the biggest threat to the New Orleans area since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Gustav was expected to make landfall before midday as a Category 3 hurricane, but its outer bands were already hitting the Gulf coast early on Monday. Nearly 2 million people fled the Gulf coast in one of the biggest evacuations in U.S. history. More than 11 million residents in five U.S. …