Shame on the USA

[Mike Schwartz]

After 9/11/01 as the USA was bombing the HELL out of Afghanistan, driving the Taliban and Osama out of there, the USA made a big deal in the press about dropping in meals to the citizens below. Not only food, but food types that would not be in disagreement with the religion and culture of the citizens there. We wre being 'humanitarians', even in the face of a climate of war [we were told].

Today, watching citizens of New Orleans, LA/USA chanting HELP!!HELP!! HELP!! to news cameras, I am sorry to say that I'm ashamed of my country over the situation as it exists, and the poor response to genuinely help these people, my brothers and sisters and fellow Americans.

You can't tell me that you couldn't parachute military personel into that city... clear people away into some space away from where they air drop supplies in.

This is not Republican or Democratic or any stripe or flag that anybody flies.

In the meantime, chew on this while I hang my head in shame....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why the Levee Broke
>
> By Will Bunch, Attytood
> Posted on September 1, 2005, Printed on September 1, 2005
> http://www.alternet.org/story
/24871/
>
> Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the
> waters continued to rise in New Orleans on Wednesday. That's because
> Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in
> the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the
> Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not
> stop until until it's level with the massive lake.
>
> There have been numerous reports of bodies floating in the poorest
> neighborhoods of this poverty-plagued city, but the truth is that the
> death toll may not be known for days, because the conditions continue
> to frustrate rescue efforts.
>
> New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a
> direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been
> working with state and local officials in the region since the late
> 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from
> a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized
> the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
>
> Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with
> carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and
> building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least
> $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity
> in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees
> surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
>
> Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a
> trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending
> pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming
> at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain.
> At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005
> specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of
> hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
>
> Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The
> Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it
> coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious
> questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
>
> In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President
> Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was
> needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004,
> article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:
>
> The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection
> project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20%
> incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That
> project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping
> stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St.
> Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.
>
> The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in
> the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
>
> "The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've
> got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to
> raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of
> settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're
> going to have to pay them interest."
>
> On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for
> Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "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."
>
> That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi
> went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and
> essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was
> now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
>
> "The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything
> is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them,
> then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem
> that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds
> have dried up so that we can't raise them."
>
> The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony
> up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in
> Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work
> with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that
> the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project
> to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
>
> The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that,
> the federal government came back this spring with the steepest
> reduction in hurricane- and flood-control funding for New Orleans in
> history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed
> a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA
> project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to
> start any new jobs. According to New Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:
>
> The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and
> improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard,
> Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are
> included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding
> is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in
> 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.
>
> "We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them
> ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put
> the work in the field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.
>
> There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research
> was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a
> Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As
> the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:
>
> That second study would take about four years to complete and would
> cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al
> Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005
> fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount.
>
> But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order
> the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the
> 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.
>
> The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for
> 2006. But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been
> racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the
> 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. The levee
> failure appears to be causing a human tragedy of epic proportions: "We
> probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections
> of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. Both airports are
> underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio interviewer.
>
> The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed,
> "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this
> year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only
> to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush
> administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for
> southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush
> proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they
> need."
>
> Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the
> things that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans.
> But in the tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration
> decided to roll the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax
> cut that mainly benefitted the rich. Now Bush has lost that gamble,
> big time.
>
> The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives
> here at home. Yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the
> Persian Gulf -- there are bodies floating through the streets of
> Louisiana. What does George W. Bush have to say for himself now?
>
> Will Bunch is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News and
> author of the blog Attytood.

[john williams]

Yes, I'm glad someone else brought it up because the footage we seen in Australia is shocking. Not only the catastrophic events, but the lack of effective relief. For a nation who's supposedly leading the world, the example being set for disaster planning and relief is pretty poor. I'm as stunned by the poor response to the catastrophe as the catastrophe itself. I was hoping I was just seeing selected footage but it does seem like many desperate people are out there on their own.

[Pete C]

Why should we help those people? They're not a threat.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Pete C

Why should we help those people? They're not a threat.

And they're mostly too poor to have left the city when they were told to evacuate. And they're probably Democrats who didn't vote in 2004.
They will take little comfort in President Bush's cheerleader approach during his speech about how this is a temperary crisis that will make the country stronger soon. I guess what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Easy for him to say.

[cookie]

Unfortunately, race issues (tied to poverty issues) are all there. Methinks the reality(not just the physical and material, but also the emotional and socio-political) is more ugly than meets the eye---and there's more ugly than the eye can bear. I can't even begin to imagine the horror.

Man, Kristina caught with our shorts down and there is some nasty rash back there.

[cookie]

Originally Posted by Mike Schwartz

You can't tell me that you couldn't parachute military personel into that city... clear people away into some space away from where they air drop supplies in."

Unfortunately, many of them are otherwise occupied.

I agree with you in principle, though, Mike. There should be people parachuting food in.

[Mike Schwartz]

Bullshit!
No excuses...this storm came ashore in Florida... went back out to sea... regrouped, and and took 3 days while strengthening to huge proportions. Via satelite it took up the entire freaking Gulf of Mexico. Well in advance they were saying the storm was going to hit as a 4 or possibly 5.

In Florida, they had four large hurricane hits last year, and much to the credit of those in government, mobilized the flow of supplies and people power both prior to and after the storms hit.

In Mississippi, there are similar tales of people in need going to the places they've been told would be the basics to sustain them, and are just now getting a trickle of supplies many days late.

[Mike Schwartz]

Originally Posted by Pete C

Why should we help those people? They're not a threat.

They'll be the most serious threat yet when it's all said and done, when the Senate and House are lost over the dominos that are this nation's overall mess come tumbling down.

[cookie]

September 2, 2005
From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy
By DAVID GONZALEZ

The scenes of floating corpses, scavengers fighting for food and desperate throngs seeking any way out of New Orleans have been tragic enough. But for many African-American leaders, there is a growing outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy were people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of society.

The victims, they note, were largely black and poor, those who toiled in the background of the tourist havens, living in tumbledown neighborhoods that were long known to be vulnerable to disaster if the levees failed. Without so much as a car or bus fare to escape ahead of time, they found themselves left behind by a failure to plan for their rescue should the dreaded day ever arrive.

"If you know that terror is approaching in terms of hurricanes, and you've already seen the damage they've done in Florida and elsewhere, what in God's name were you thinking?" said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "I think a lot of it has to do with race and class. The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

In the days since neighborhoods and towns along the Gulf Coast were wiped out by the winds and water, there has been a growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck. Just as in developing countries where the failures of rural development policies become glaringly clear at times of natural disasters like floods or drought, many national leaders said, some of the United States' poorest cities have been left vulnerable by federal policies.

"No one would have checked on a lot of the black people in these parishes while the sun shined," said Mayor Milton D. Tutwiler of Winstonville, Miss. "So am I surprised that no one has come to help us now? No."

The subject is roiling black-oriented Web sites and message boards, and many black officials say it is a prime subject of conversation around the country. Some African-Americans have described the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina as "our tsunami," while noting that there has yet to be a response equal to that which followed the Asian tragedy.

Roosevelt F. Dorn, the mayor of Inglewood, Calif., and the president of the National Association of Black Mayors, said relief and rescue officials needed to act faster.

"I have a list of black mayors in Mississippi and Alabama who are crying out for help," Mr. Dorn said. "Their cities are gone and they are in despair. And no one has answered their cries."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said cities had been dismissed by the Bush administration because Mr. Bush received few urban votes.

"Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response," Mr. Jackson said, after meeting with Louisiana officials yesterday. "I'm not saying that myself, but what's self-evident is that you have many poor people without a way out."

In New Orleans, the disaster's impact underscores the intersection of race and class in a city where fully two-thirds of its residents are black and more than a quarter of the city lives in poverty. In the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, which was inundated by the floodwaters, more than 98 percent of the residents are black and more than a third live in poverty.

Spencer R. Crew, president and chief executive officer of the national Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, said the aftermath of the hurricane would force people to confront inequality.

"Most cities have a hidden or not always talked about poor population, black and white, and most of the time we look past them," Dr. Crew said. "This is a moment in time when we can't look past them. Their plight is coming to the forefront now. They were the ones less able to hop in a car and less able to drive off."

That disparity has been criticized as a "disgrace" by Charles B. Rangel, the senior Democratic congressman from New York City, who said it was made all the worse by the failure of government officials to have planned.

"I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence, Mr. Rangel said, adding that the danger to the levees was clear.

"I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich," he said.

Outside Brooklyn Law School yesterday, a man selling recordings of famous African-Americans was upset at the failure to have prepared for the worst. The man, who said his name was Muhammad Ali, drew a damning conclusion about the failure to protect New Orleans.

"Blacks ain't worth it," he said. "New Orleans is a hopeless case."

Among the messages and essays circulating in cyberspace that lament the lost lives and missed opportunities is one by Mark Naison, a white professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University in the Bronx.

"Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws?" Mr. Naison wrote. "If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions."

That sentiment was shared by members of other minority groups who understand the bizarre equality of poverty.

"We tend to think of natural disasters as somehow even-handed, as somehow random," said Martín Espada, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts and poet of a decidedly leftist political bent who is Puerto Rican. "Yet it has always been thus: poor people are in danger. That is what it means to be poor. It's dangerous to be poor. It's dangerous to be black. It's dangerous to be Latino."

This Sunday there will be prayers. In pews from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast, the faithful will come together and pray for those who lived and those who died. They will seek to understand something that has yet to be fully comprehended.

Some may talk of a divine hand behind all of this. But others have already noted the absence of a human one.

"Everything is God's will," said Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. "But there's a certain amount of common sense that God gives to individuals to prepare for certain things."

That means, Mr. Steele said, not waiting until the eve of crisis.

"Most of the people that live in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable are black and poor," he said. "So it comes down to a lack of sensitivity on the part of people in Washington that you need to help poor folks. It's as simple as that."

Contributing reporting from New York for this article were Andy Newman, William Yardley, Jonathan P. Hicks, Patrick D. Healy, Diane Cardwell, Anemona Hartocollis, Ronald Smothers, Jeff Leeds, Manny Fernandez and Colin Moynihan. Also contributing were Michael Cooper in Albany, Gretchen Ruethling in Chicago, Brenda Goodman in Atlanta and Carolyn Marshall in San Francisco.

[Frank Kimbrough]

And with all this going on, Cheney's still on vacation, and Condi's in New York taking in "Spamalot" and buying a thousand dollars' worth of shoes. Does "let them eat cake" sound familiar? This adminisration is below contempt - it's now a cliche, but if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

[Clay Fink]

Originally Posted by Frank Kimbrough

and Condi's in New York taking in "Spamalot" and buying a thousand dollars' worth of shoes.

Jeeze, Frank. Do you know how hard it is to find size 13 D, 5 inched spiked heeled orange pumps in DC?

From that America hating Michael Moore. How dare he...

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina
and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted.
Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do
you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot.
Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could
really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do
like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to
begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of
Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but
it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were
still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was
on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I
know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't
like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of
dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to
Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps.
Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was
over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you
specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans
this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if
you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be
any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more
important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was
moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as
you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the
disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on
some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to
use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out.
Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would
happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and
hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their
global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a
hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that
stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30
percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no
transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's
not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white
people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has
nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army
helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and
the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch.
She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving
across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can
catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

[Dr Dave]

Cookie's story is from The New York Times.

Yes, indeed: The situation in New Orleans is shameful. The behavior of our Dear Leader and his minions is shameful, but hardly unexpected: Who did we think these characters were in the first place? I'm sure Assistant Dear Leader Cheney would be on the scene, were it not that he has "other priorities."

[jesus marion joseph]

It really does boggle the mind that government officials on all levels could have been caught so flat-footed as it appears they are; especially on the federal level. I am by no means an expert on disaster preparedness, but it seems that Homeland Security didn't start organizing until after the storm hit. I would've thought they would have been gearing up on Friday or Saturday, when it was certain that the storm was going to be severe. It wouldn't hurt to be over prepared, would it?

I can't believe what I see on the TV in regards to the people who didn't or couldn't leave ahead of the storm.

[lynn]

Maybe it's time to call in the experts -

U.N. Offers Disaster Assistance to U.S.
September 02, 2005 7:20 AM EDT

GENEVA - The United Nations has created a special task force ready to dispatch disaster experts to the U.S. to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday.

"We are on standby, the alert has been given," said Elizabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman at the U.N. office known as OCHA. "We have created a task force to ensure a fast and efficient response."

Byrs said OCHA had alerted the worldwide members of its U.N. Disaster Assessment and Coordination Center (UNDAC) to tell them that they might be deployed within the next hours.

OCHA's alert comes several hours after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan offered to help the U.S. with the victims of Katrina.

The U.N.'s children fund, one of the U.N. agencies involved in the task force, said it was particularly worried about the children in areas struck by Katrina. UNICEF said there could be as many as 400,000 children who may remain without shelter for a few weeks or even months.

"The U.S. has the financial means to react to this catastrophe, but we can help with technical experts and ... psychological assistance," said Damien Personnaz, spokesman for UNICEF.

He said the last time he remembered the international community offering to assist the U.S. with a catastrophe was in the wake of the 1989, 6.9 magnitude earthquake centered near Santa Cruz.

There are over one hundred UNDAC experts across the world. The highly trained experts specialize on a wide range of issues from flooding to earthquakes and health crises. Five teams helped in the Indian Ocean area with last December's tsunami.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

Bush has no shame. Big part of the problem.

[jazzy mary]

Originally Posted by Pete C

Why should we help those people? They're not a threat.

Pete, you're brilliant!

[patricia]

Our Prime Minister offered our help whatever it takes, however long it takes yesterday.
Puzzling comment by the news reader when he said that the Prime Minister hoped that the U.S. would accept our help!!!
Is it even conceivable that the Administration would refuse our help??
Surely not?

[Monte Smith]

The situation in New Orleans is particularly bad because of geography. You don't see the same level of badness for victims of the hurricane in Mississippi (where Katrina actually came ashore) or Alabama or rural Louisiana as you do for those in New Orleans--though it is bad in those areas. One problem is the flood in N.O. came and it didn't go. If the problem was just lack of competence by FEMA or lack of compassion or racism, then there is no reason Mobile or Biloxi or Pass Christian or Gulfport should be doing better than New Orleans. But they are, for a set of solid, sad reasons that have nothing to do with the utility of the response to this emergency (which hasn't been exceptional).

The BBC reports that today the USAF has certified runways in the N.O. vicinity are safe for military aircraft; that will help immensely to get supplies (including helicopters) flown into the area. The lights are up and running on the landing strips, too, so that flights can go in and out at night. Hopefully this'll ease the suffering, but the initiator of this thread might want to note that we weren't dropping MREs on the Afghans the day after 9/11, nor the week after either.

[cookie]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Cookie's story is from The New York Times.

Yes it is. I didn't notice that the header didn't print. The authors' names are at the end of the article. Not trying to pass it off as my own; a mere oversight.

I had a conversation this morning and the guy I was talking to was blaming the thugs for not letting the government do their work. To that I say, as Mike did, Bullshit. If the government had taken charge in a more timely,logical and agressive fashion, they would have had more control over the situation. The people are desperate and desperate people do desperate things.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by cookie

The people are desperate and desperate people do desperate things.

That is definitely true, and at the same time it is a complicating problem in the situation. I think it is ridiculous to want to either blame or exonerate FEMA or to make the victims of this hurricane into either saints or villains. It is all true, but just part of the truth.

I'd have liked to see competent federal authorities arrive on the cusp of the flood waters, but in real life it doesn't always happen so lickity-split. The money was freed up for emergency efforts before the storm came ashore, but it was a very bad disaster. I'm furious at anyone who wants to be ashamed of America because of this, I think that is so stupid. People are doing the best they can and the situation isn't as simple as the blamestormers on either side want to make it seem.

[Paul B]

Originally Posted by cookie

To that I say, as Mike did, Bullshit.

I'll second that.

[Cem]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

I'm furious at anyone who wants to be ashamed of America because of this, I think that is so stupid. People are doing the best they can and the situation isn't as simple as the blamestormers on either side want to make it seem.

Forget sides. Are you telling me that you're not appalled how your tax dollars were not earmarked & no emergency plan was in place for such a disaster, but rather the monies go to the a war effort -not a defensive one, no less?

[Monte Smith]

I'm upset that the relief effort hasn't been more effective, but I don't know yet what failures of planning or performance might be blameworthy. And no, I am not appalled that we are in Iraq.

[Paul B]

And no, I am not appalled that we are in Iraq.

None of you war-lovers could be expected to be appalled.

[Cem]

Let's get the priorities straight, Monte. One should take care of one's family & immediate surroundings first, before extending "help" elsewhere.

[sonic1]

Geography...bullshit.

If we can do what we do way the hell over in Iraq, there should be no excuses about geography as to why help has been so slow. Monday morning the storm hit, and I finally see action on fucking thursday, sort of.

Bush himself said today that the federal government has been embarressingly "slow", whoever the federal government is (probably a bunch of democrats).

[jazzy mary]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

I'm upset that the relief effort hasn't been more effective, but I don't know yet what failures of planning or performance might be blameworthy. And no, I am not appalled that we are in Iraq.

Monte!! When we knew that evacuations needed to be done--in light of the hurrricane coming-- the government should have had the Nat'l Guard in there with trucks evacuating people who did not have cars!!

I AM appalled that we are in Iraq.

[sonic1]

Honey, the national guard is quite already busy. I don't know where they are getting them from for this effort.

[RainyDay]

I absolutely share Mike and Cookie's frustration and anger. But I honestly believe that both sides of the aisle have to take responsiblility for this. No one should get off. This has been a disaster waiting to happen for a long time.

[sonic1]

On Sunday they were predicting that a city below sea level was going to encounter 30 feet of water.



They actually expected worse than what happened. The lack of preparedness on the part of the federal government is not excusable. Excuses need to stop and work needs to begin.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by RainyDay

This has been a disaster waiting to happen for a long time.

It has been. I read a book ten years ago that basically said if a hurricane hits New Orleans, she's toast. This was a book about the big flood of early last century when thousands were killed and displaced. One of the things that this book criticized was the Army Corps of Engineers--for doing such a good job with the levees that it made people think it was safe to live in New Orleans! As I said before--there is a geographical problem with the city.

JM points to the chief problem with the response to this disaster. Not everyone heeded or were able to heed the mandatory evacuation order. 400,000 out of a population of 500,000 left, but that still left behind the most vulnerable (and let's be fair, also people were were heedless of danger).