Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

[Ocean Breeze]

Thats the one Ocean and the US founding fathers put that in there so the Army would never be used to police the people .Anti police state legislation is what I'd call it :wink:

shows how far things have deteriorated too. How sad.

(an aside.......but I really like your new sig. If that don't say it all........ :wink:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/flood.html


mother nature can be mean.....but is no match for the current USg. :evil:

 

[GL Schmitt]

SPLOID EXCLUSIVE: FEMA is directing Katrina donations to none other than the Rev. Pat Robertson …

Millions of Americans and people around the world have rushed to donate money to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which is shaping up to be one of the worst U.S. disasters in history, if not the worst.

FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the lead federal agency in the rescue & recovery operation at work in New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast.

FEMA has released to the media and on its Web site a list of suggested charities to help the storm’s hundreds of thousands of victims. The Red Cross is first on the list.

The Rev. Pat Robertson’s “Operation Blessing” is next on the list.

“It’s an outrage,” said privacy watchdog Bill Scannell, who alerted Sploid to the FEMA / Robertson scam. “Operation f**cking Blessing? And it’s right underneath the Red Cross link!”

Scannell, currently campaigning against the Transportation Security Administration’s refusal to turn over personal information illegally collected from 100 million U.S. air passengers, noted that Operation Blessing’s board of directors is dominated by the televanglist and his family.

The chairman, “MG Robertson,” is none other than the Rev. Pat — Marion Gordon Robertson is his real name — while Pat’s wife DeDe is vice president and son Gordon Robertson is also on the board.

The front operation for the radical, pro-assassination televangelist and Republican power broker is also based in the Rev. Pat’s headquarters, Virginia Beach.

Robertson’s shell organizations have already collected more than $25 million from the federal government under various “faith based” federal-handout programs. And with millions of distraught citizens looking to FEMA for help in finding reputable organizations to help Katrina survivors, Robertson stands to profit magnificently from the horror that has fallen on New Orleans and the Gulf

This is a wee bit out of date.

Since this posting, Second Harvest has been added in the second position after the Red Cross

If you look here under Volunteer or Make a Donation you will find that Operation Blessing has been down-graded to the third place.

:x Misserable faith-based raffa-zaffel ^#^$&%$^%$#$!!!

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Misserable faith-based raffa-zaffel ^#^$&%$^%$#$!!!

agreed.!! :evil:

 

[moghrabi]

How New Orleans Was Lost

by Paul Craig Roberts

Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war.

There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.

The situation is the same in Mississippi.

The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fool's mission in Iraq.

The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconservatives in the Bush administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.

After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.

Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.

The mayor of New Orleans was counting on helicopters to put in place massive sandbags to repair the levee. However, someone called the few helicopters away to rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed the massive pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared under deep water.

What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi war – one of our oldest and most beautiful cities, a famous city, a historic city.

Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the U.S. government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corps of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corps of Engineers' projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "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. 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."

Why can't the U.S. government focus on America's needs and leave other countries alone? Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants? Why are American helicopters blowing up Iraqi homes instead of saving American homes in New Orleans?

How can the Bush administration be so incompetent as to expose Americans at home to dire risks by exhausting American resources in foolish foreign adventures? What kind of "homeland security" is this?

All Bush has achieved by invading Iraq is to kill and wound thousands of people while destroying America's reputation. The only beneficiaries are oil companies capitalizing on a good excuse to jack up the price of gasoline and Osama bin Laden's recruitment.

What we have is a Republican war for oil company profits while New Orleans sinks beneath the waters.


Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=7131

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Who lost New Orleans???

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan33.html


things just could get might hot for bush now. ( gosh , I hope so......... as he has caused enough pain and "heat" & suffering during his tenure. )

hey mog. (nice to see ya back here :wink: ) Similar themes , different sources. Things could unravel fast ......

http://www.canadiancontent.net/en/jd/go?Url=http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=7131

another excellent article.:

The Disastrous Proof of a Failed Foreign Policy: The Specter of New Orleans

by Christopher Deliso
balkanalysis.com

Had it been a terrorist attack, half of the earth's surface would no doubt have been vaporized by American nuclear bombs by now. Yet for all its trickery and deceit, even the Bush administration can't blame the flattening of New Orleans on terrorists.

Nor can it hide behind a wall of red-blooded bluster, demanding bloody retaliation against evil, for the act of violence that has left the Gulf (America's, this time) devastated was a random act of nature. Or was it? After all, it's not as if the southeastern United States is afflicted annually by hurricanes or anything…

Accidents Waiting to Happen

Indeed, Hurricane Katrina was eminently predictable. In another way, so was the terrorist onslaught of Sept. 11. For the lay meteorologists of foreign policy who recognized well in advance that the U.S. had made itself a target of Islamic extremists, precisely because of its military presence in the Middle East and unconditional support for Israel, the attacks were pretty much inevitable.

The latter catastrophe has so far led to two wars marked by lies and an utter lack of official accountability. But the former disaster, if we're lucky, just might lead us out of the morass generated by Bush's reaction to the terrorists – if, as seems far more likely this time around, the president won't be able to evade the "accountability moment" he said had transpired successfully with his reelection. For as commentators like Paul Craig Roberts and Norman Solomon have been quick to point out, the War Party's obsession with invading Iraq has directly and needlessly exacerbated Hurricane Katrina's destructive power – which now reflects rather poorly on their judgment.

According to the Washington Post, the National Guard troops of the two states afflicted – Mississippi and Louisiana – are for the most part fighting in, or recovering from, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hurricane's massive damage is now "stretching the limits of available manpower."

According to the article, Mississippi's National Guard currently has over 4,000 soldiers lost to the Iraq campaign, while Louisiana has about 3,000 troops in Baghdad alone. "Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people," stated Mississippi National Guard Spokesman Lt. Andy Thaggard to the Post. Lacking enough local troops to deal with this massive humanitarian disaster, the Pentagon has had to call in thousands more from distant states.

But it gets worse. As with 9/11, certain preventative measures could have been taken beforehand that would have greatly minimized Katrina's destructive power. While the Bush administration contradicts its own intelligence services in claiming that that no one could have seen the terrorist attacks of 2001 coming, it is shocking now to see how ill-prepared the government was to deal with something that is basically an annual threat. After all, were a blizzard to strike Hawaii, no one would blame the Honolulu Fire Department for not having stocked enough snowplows. Yet having detailed advanced evacuation plans in an endemic hurricane zone is something completely different.

Indeed, as Paul Craig Roberts implies, the Battle of N'Orleans is where the president might get a crack at his second accountability moment:

"Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the U.S. government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corps of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

"Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corps of Engineers' projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.

"Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): '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. 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.'"

Sadly, the "war on terror" that every state and county cashed in on in the aftermath of Avoidable Disaster No. 1 resulted in a needless allocation of millions of dollars to places where they weren't likely to ever be used. This lamentable triumph of pork-barrel politics owed as much to the greed of elected officials as it did to the total (and continuing) failure to do honest risk assessments. Indeed, al-Qaeda in Tiptonville, Tenn., or a hurricane in New Orleans? It's too tough to call…

A Lament for Exit Strategies

There are some debates that just shouldn't have to exist. Often, they derive from unjustifiable wars. And so while for the past two years the pundits have been debating the need for an "exit strategy" for Iraq, and what such a strategy would involve, when it would be implemented, etc., it seems that this little distraction helped to keep American leaders firmly focused away from thinking of far more likely exit strategies in the homeland itself. For just as shocking as the reappropriation of manpower and material equipment for the Iraq adventure is the apparent lack of what could less figuratively be described as an exit strategy for New Orleans – that is, how to get the thousands of victims the hell out of town while maintaining at least some semblance of law and order.

Essentially, what the initial reports – of unruly mobs, arson and looting, armed gangs firing at police and aid helicopters – reveal is that securing the exit of New Orleans resembles quite remarkably the American entrance into Baghdad. And the horrifying descriptions of carnage could just as well have come from any ordinary day in Iraq:

"[A]n old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet."

And then the kicker:

"'I don't treat my dog like that,' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. 'I buried my dog.' He added: 'You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here.'"

It took an unprecedented tragedy to do it, but it looks like the government's indefensibly wrong priorities are finally starting to become obvious, even to war supporters. It will be very interesting to see over the next few weeks and months how the War Party can continue to justify "staying the course" in destructive overseas missions, even as New Orleans and the southern coast lie in ruins. In short, in its random wrath and apolitical existence, a natural disaster may just do what Cindy Sheehan, for all her incontestable moral authority, could not: galvanize a politically diverse majority of Americans to demand their elected officials take care of their needs before those of foreigners.

A Specter of Self-Condemnation

And this is precisely where the spectacle of New Orleans takes on frightening and ugly dimensions. It exists as a direct indictment of the hubristic government's belief in limitless resources and endless wars. It is, in fact, a ghastly manifestation of foreign policy gone wrong.

And so the hurricane's aftermath becomes a garish, distorted reflection of all of America's modern wars rolled up into one. The busloads of refugees, and their fetid holding pen in the Louisiana Superdome, conjure up images of the Kosovo refugee crisis of 1999, another needless tragedy caused directly by American bombing. The lawlessness, thievery, and gunfire on city streets are eerily reminiscent of the wave of looting that followed American tanks into Iraq's capital in spring of 2003. The rotting corpses and terrorized residents in New Orleans share the same experience with ordinary people in Iraq, who continue to suffer the outcome of America's failure to leave a country where it is clearly unwanted. And finally, framing it all, the stunning photos of a flattened city directly evoke painful memories of that other Ground Zero, the one that began it all, almost exactly four years ago.

As was the case then, amidst the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center, the specter of New Orleans exists as a reproach to a government whose foreign policy has been very successfully in one thing – putting America last.

…And a Betrayal

There is another kind of precedent for the disaster, of course. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 resulted in identical destruction, mayhem, and looting, and the National Guard was also there to help. An editorial from that time put their contribution in context:

"[T]he work done and still being done by the National Guard of California will be long and gratefully remembered by the people of San Francisco and the State. The Minute Men and the Old Continentals were the National Guard of their day.

"They were the National Guard (militia) that fought through the Revolution. Our present National Guard is descended in direct official line from those citizen soldiers that stood, yielding not, at Saratoga, Ticonderoga, Stony Point and Yorktown, and have proved themselves worthy of their ancestors."

By ensuring that Louisiana's National Guardsmen are kept far from home in Iraq, locked in a pointless war of attrition, prevented from saving their own kin and ordered to kill foreigners instead, President Bush is dishonoring this proud legacy.

did anyone see bush sr....on the telee today (with son and Clinton)??? He actually looks worried.....as he should be.

 

[GL Schmitt]

CHRONOLOGY of a disaster.

....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration.

Read it and weep.

 

[moghrabi]

Who lost New Orleans???

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan33.html


things just could get might hot for bush now. ( gosh , I hope so......... as he has caused enough pain and "heat" & suffering during his tenure. )

hey mog. (nice to see ya back here :wink: ) Similar themes , different sources. Things could unravel fast ......

http://www.canadiancontent.net/en/jd/go?Url=http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=7131

another excellent article.

Hey OB. I hope you are doing well.

I wonder why the American people still have this bastard in office. Disaster after disaster since he came to office. They should put him down the toilet and flush twice. The only problem is it might get stinky down there.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

I wonder why the American people still have this bastard in office.

heck , If I know. Not sure they do either. Maybe things just had to unravel in front of their eyes.... before they could be bothered in taking a stand against this insanity ......disguised as a gov't .

 

[Said1]

CHRONOLOGY of a disaster.

....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration.

Read it and weep.

According to FEMA's own web-site, they were several hundred million dollars in debt to the Treasury Debt at the time of the first cuts. The debt was aquired from from the last hurricane that hit New Orleans.

 

[Steve French]

RE: Did New Orleans Catas

"His insane denial of science arrived"

This isn't just Bush, it's a cultural paradigm. All we can do is conform to nature and leave it alone. Nature will heal itself - we can't do anything. Now the idiots have finally realized that destroying "wetlands" (formerly called swamps) was a really dumb idea. The "experts" thought they knew how to control nature, but once again they were wrong. Just like now.
Of course they knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of time.
Dykes or no dykes a tsunami like the recent one would turn New Orleans into a modern day Atlantis. Scientists and environmentalists have known this for a very long time.

Here : "The underlying problem, Maestri said, is that the city never should have been built in the first place. It is a terrific location for business but a lousy location for safety."
(we listen to "businessmen" - that is the cultural paradigm)

When Ivan passed nearby, they knew -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20277-2004Sep14_2.html

 

[Said1]

RE: Did New Orleans Catas

Of course they knew.

http://www.canadiancontent.net/en/j...bs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline04/0704feat.html

 

[missile]

The dyke system was only designed to withstand a Force 3 hurricane. More funding would have caused the upgrading needed to this,but the USA is technically bankrupt.

 

[Said1]

The dyke system was only designed to withstand a Force 3 hurricane. More funding would have caused the upgrading needed to this,but the USA is technically bankrupt.

There are several problems with the dyke system pre-dating Bush.

 

[peapod]

Funny innit, same old, same old, blame and money. I guess thats easy from a comfy chair, nice and warm and a full belly. I would not presume to know what its like to be in a disaster, with no law and order. But I was once lived in a apartment building that caught on fire. I had a glimpse of what it must be like to be caught up in group fear. Nothing compared to this, but it always had an effect on how I thought about disasters over the years.

 

[#juan]

Ultimately, storms are driven by heat.

Since global warming is pretty much a fact, we can probably expect more of these storms in the future. Bigger and stronger storms. Will New Orleans be any better prepared for next year's storm season. I can't help but feel that the city is going to be gone in twenty years. Sad, because it is one of the places I wanted to visit.

 

[Said1]

Funny innit, same old, same old, blame and money. I guess thats easy from a comfy chair, nice and warm and a full belly. I would not presume to know what its like to be in a disaster, with no law and order. But I was once lived in a apartment building that caught on fire. I had a glimpse of what it must be like to be caught up in group fear. Nothing compared to this, but it always had an effect on how I thought about disasters over the years.

I was two weeks away from delivering my daughter when the ice storm hit. I know all about panic, not that the ice storm compares to this, not by a long shot.

 

[manda]

Ultimately, storms are driven by heat.

Since global warming is pretty much a fact, we can probably expect more of these storms in the future. Bigger and stronger storms. Will New Orleans be any better prepared for next year's storm season. I can't help but feel that the city is going to be gone in twenty years. Sad, because it is one of the places I wanted to visit.

I hear that the city plans to be up and running for Mardi gras...I'm not so optimistic about that...I suggest you visit as soon as things are rebuilt because I feel like your 20 year time frame is not small enough, I wouldn't be surprised if they get hit again this year

 

[GL Schmitt]

Dateline: Bilox, Mississippi: Friday, September 2, 200 - 1:50 PM EDT

Incurious George strutted along a rubble-strewn field in battered Biloxi, shuffled up to the cameras, his arm flung about a young black girl, promising he would get her a new shirt, spent considerable time reporting on the oil refinery problem, and then shared his personal emotional response, saying, “There is a feeling here in Mississippi that is uplifting.”

He then moseyed off toward New Orleans, where (assuming that he cannot walk on water) he will not get so close to that area of destruction nor that city's survivors of Hurricane Katrina's devastation.

It’s probably just as well. Were that possible, there is a real potential that he might get another uplifting feeling from the New Orleans citizens, provided only that they can still find something sufficiently stable to throw a rope over.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Dateline: Bilox, Mississippi: Friday, September 2, 200 - 1:50 PM EDT

Incurious George strutted along a rubble-strewn field in battered Biloxi, shuffled up to the cameras, his arm flung about a young black girl, promising he would get her a new shirt, spent considerable time reporting on the oil refinery problem, and then shared his personal emotional response, saying, “There is a feeling here in Mississippi that is uplifting.”

He then moseyed off toward New Orleans, where (assuming that he cannot walk on water) he will not get so close to that area of destruction nor that city's survivors of Hurricane Katrina's devastation.

It’s probably just as well. Were that possible, there is a real potential that he might get another uplifting feeling from the New Orleans citizens, provided only that they can still find something sufficiently stable to throw a rope over.

gotta ask.;-) is being lynched an "uplifting" feeling??? :wink:

(there are no adjectives to describe his ineffectiveness/insanity ...)