http://www.counterpunch.org/vest09052005.html
Battle of/for New Orleans ........Indeed.
excerpt:
Battle of/for New Orleans ........Indeed.
excerpt:
Troops "fresh back from Iraq" are at this moment engaged in "hunting down" people defined as "looters." An Army Times report described the mission as a struggle to put down "the insurgency in the city." The only thing to prevent us from describing the Crescent City as Baghdad-on-the-bayou is the thought that Fallujah might be a better analogy, given the scale of destruction.
Breaking metaphorical ranks was a brigadier general's prediction that the birthplace of jazz is "going to look like Little Somalia." From Metairie to Mogadishu? Was he preparing the public, and the media, for a Black Hawk Down?
Imagine the reaction if -- rather than ordering the National Guard to "shoot to kill" the desperate the angry and the unlucky -- the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, or the president of the United States had instead declared that anyone so selfish as to be caught "protecting private property" during a humanitarian crisis would be shot on sight.