The New York Times
September 5, 2005
By BOB HERBERT
"Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead"
Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.
The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.
Hospitals with deathly ill patients were left without power, with ventilators that didn't work, with floodwaters rising on the lower floors and with corpses rotting in the corridors and stairwells. People unable to breathe on their own, or with cancer or heart disease or kidney failure, slipped into comas and sank into their final sleep in front of helpless doctors and relatives. These were Americans in desperate trouble.
The president didn't seem to notice.
Death and the stink of decay were all over the city. Corpses were propped up in wheelchairs and on lawn furniture, or left to decompose on sunbaked sidewalks. Some floated by in water fouled by human feces.
Degenerates roamed the city, shooting at rescue workers, beating and robbing distraught residents and tourists, raping women and girls. The president of the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world didn't seem to notice.
Viewers could watch diabetics go into insulin shock on national television, and you could see babies with the pale, vacant look of hunger that we're more used to seeing in dispatches from the third world. You could see their mothers, dirty and hungry themselves, weeping.
Old, critically ill people were left to soil themselves and in some cases die like stray animals on the floor of an airport triage center. For days the president of the United States didn't seem to notice.
He would have noticed if the majority of these stricken folks had been white and prosperous. But they weren't. Most were black and poor, and thus, to the George W. Bush administration, still invisible.
After days of withering criticism from white and black Americans, from conservatives as well as liberals, from Republicans and Democrats, the president finally felt compelled to act, however feebly. (The chorus of criticism from nearly all quarters demanding that the president do something tells me that the nation as a whole is so much better than this administration.)
Mr. Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed) that he didn't get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk, reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but that it would be replaced with "a fantastic house - and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."
Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.
And it is this incompetence and indifference to suffering (yes, the carnage continues to mount in Iraq) that makes it so hard to be optimistic about the prospects for the United States over the next few years. At a time when effective, innovative leadership is desperately needed to cope with matters of war and peace, terrorism and domestic security, the economic imperatives of globalization and the rising competition for oil, the United States is being led by a man who seems oblivious to the reality of his awesome responsibilities.
Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude. But this is not about politics. It's about competence. And when the president is so obviously clueless about matters so obviously important, it means that the rest of us, like the people left stranded in New Orleans, are in deep, deep trouble.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Monday, September 05, 2005
Sunday, September 04, 2005
'My Pet Goat' -- The Sequel
By Greg Mitchell
This time, during a catastrophe, the president did not merely dither for seven minutes, but for three days, and his top advisors followed suit. While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall failure of leadership in this weeks hurricane's disaster, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.
While a rising chorus in the press has taken the White House, FEMA and the Pentagon to task for performing miserably in their response to the human disaster on the Gulf Coast, few have focused on the most telling aspect of the entire failure. It’s not just incompetence. It’s a shameful lack of concern: The 9/11 “My Pet Goat” dithering on an administration-wide scale.
Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action.
While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall deadly failure of leadership, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.
President Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said: “In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.” But Bush, and his top aides, quite frankly, did just that.
I was reminded of this today, seeing pictures of Vice President Dick Cheney finally showing up at the White House after riding out the storm-of-the-century in Wyoming. Perhaps he brought back with him a couple dozen trout to throw on the grill for the White House staffers.
His absence, and the president’s performance during it, can only add to the rumors that Bush is clueless without the Big Guy at his side.
This follows Bush himself remaining on vacation for more than two days after the storm hit, despite acknowledging this was the worst disaster in the nation’s history. He did take a trip during those days, not back to Washington but out to San Diego to deliver a political speech comparing his Iraq war to World War II. It got little play because nearly everyone else in the country, beyond his inner circle, was focused on New Orleans instead.
What that trip did produce was a picture of Bush laughing with a country singer and strumming a guitar. But at least the president did start heading home late Wednesday. As he did, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was still enjoying her vacation in New York.
In fact, that night she enjoyed a few good yucks while attending the goofy Broadway play “Spamalot.” Ironically, the Bush team's performance this week did indeed seem like something out of a Monty Python skit. Each, in his or her own way, took a bunch of "silly walks."
Condi also played tennis with Monica Seles and on Thursday went on a shoe-shopping spree on Fifth Avenue until a fellow customer yelled at her for not doing her job and bloggers exposed all of this. Then she hurriedly headed back to Washington. Whoops, we discovered she was overdue in getting a grip on offers to help that were pouring in from overseas governments and organizations.
Paging Andrew Card: Turns out he was Bush's Maine man.
And what of FEMA chief Michael Brown? He was so out-of-it that he didn’t even know about 10,000 evacuees living and dying at the Convention Center, even after they had received wide TV coverage for hours and hours.
The next day, the president greeted him with, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." A medal is surely on the way. This from a president who has been fighting a "war on terror" in Iraq while appointing to the top FEMA position here at home a man whose main career experience was running an Arabian horse association.
At a press conference on Thursday, the fourth day of the disaster, with newspapers and TV reporting tens of thousands stranded at hospitals, homes and a highway overpass, Homeland Security chief Michael Cherotff was asked by a reporter if he thought only hundreds or maybe many more needed rescued. He replied:
“I'd be guessing. I mean, a thousand seems like a very large number, but we have already rescued several thousand. Hopefully, most people have gotten themselves onto roofs and have been picked up. But, as I said, rather than give you a guesstimate, I can tell you that as long as there is someone on a roof waving a flag, we're going to be sending a helicopter out there to get them.”
At the same press briefing, Cherotff was asked if he thought there were enough soldiers on the ground to control the situation. His answer: “I'm satisfied that we have not only more than enough forces there and on the way. And frankly, what we're doing is we are putting probably more than we need in order to send an unambiguous message that we will not tolerate lawlessness or violence or interference with the evacuation.”
While the 9/11 “My Pet Goat” episode was certainly illuminating, it’s not certain what might have worked out better that day had the president dropped the book and taken action. But his failure to grab the reins in the hurricane catastrophe for three days this week probably doomed hundreds, or more, to death.
This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name.
This time, during a catastrophe, the president did not merely dither for seven minutes, but for three days, and his top advisors followed suit. While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall failure of leadership in this weeks hurricane's disaster, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.
While a rising chorus in the press has taken the White House, FEMA and the Pentagon to task for performing miserably in their response to the human disaster on the Gulf Coast, few have focused on the most telling aspect of the entire failure. It’s not just incompetence. It’s a shameful lack of concern: The 9/11 “My Pet Goat” dithering on an administration-wide scale.
Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action.
While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall deadly failure of leadership, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.
President Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said: “In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.” But Bush, and his top aides, quite frankly, did just that.
I was reminded of this today, seeing pictures of Vice President Dick Cheney finally showing up at the White House after riding out the storm-of-the-century in Wyoming. Perhaps he brought back with him a couple dozen trout to throw on the grill for the White House staffers.
His absence, and the president’s performance during it, can only add to the rumors that Bush is clueless without the Big Guy at his side.
This follows Bush himself remaining on vacation for more than two days after the storm hit, despite acknowledging this was the worst disaster in the nation’s history. He did take a trip during those days, not back to Washington but out to San Diego to deliver a political speech comparing his Iraq war to World War II. It got little play because nearly everyone else in the country, beyond his inner circle, was focused on New Orleans instead.
What that trip did produce was a picture of Bush laughing with a country singer and strumming a guitar. But at least the president did start heading home late Wednesday. As he did, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was still enjoying her vacation in New York.
In fact, that night she enjoyed a few good yucks while attending the goofy Broadway play “Spamalot.” Ironically, the Bush team's performance this week did indeed seem like something out of a Monty Python skit. Each, in his or her own way, took a bunch of "silly walks."
Condi also played tennis with Monica Seles and on Thursday went on a shoe-shopping spree on Fifth Avenue until a fellow customer yelled at her for not doing her job and bloggers exposed all of this. Then she hurriedly headed back to Washington. Whoops, we discovered she was overdue in getting a grip on offers to help that were pouring in from overseas governments and organizations.
Paging Andrew Card: Turns out he was Bush's Maine man.
And what of FEMA chief Michael Brown? He was so out-of-it that he didn’t even know about 10,000 evacuees living and dying at the Convention Center, even after they had received wide TV coverage for hours and hours.
The next day, the president greeted him with, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." A medal is surely on the way. This from a president who has been fighting a "war on terror" in Iraq while appointing to the top FEMA position here at home a man whose main career experience was running an Arabian horse association.
At a press conference on Thursday, the fourth day of the disaster, with newspapers and TV reporting tens of thousands stranded at hospitals, homes and a highway overpass, Homeland Security chief Michael Cherotff was asked by a reporter if he thought only hundreds or maybe many more needed rescued. He replied:
“I'd be guessing. I mean, a thousand seems like a very large number, but we have already rescued several thousand. Hopefully, most people have gotten themselves onto roofs and have been picked up. But, as I said, rather than give you a guesstimate, I can tell you that as long as there is someone on a roof waving a flag, we're going to be sending a helicopter out there to get them.”
At the same press briefing, Cherotff was asked if he thought there were enough soldiers on the ground to control the situation. His answer: “I'm satisfied that we have not only more than enough forces there and on the way. And frankly, what we're doing is we are putting probably more than we need in order to send an unambiguous message that we will not tolerate lawlessness or violence or interference with the evacuation.”
While the 9/11 “My Pet Goat” episode was certainly illuminating, it’s not certain what might have worked out better that day had the president dropped the book and taken action. But his failure to grab the reins in the hurricane catastrophe for three days this week probably doomed hundreds, or more, to death.
This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name.
Bush Faces Rising Complaints About Handling of Disaster
By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, Sept 4 - President Bush faced increasingly bitter complaints today from local and state officials in the battered Gulf Coast region as he struggled to exert control over a disaster that almost surely claimed thousands of lives.
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a Democrat, said today that she was so angry about federal failures and second-guessing that if she heard any more criticism of local efforts, even from the president, she might "punch" him.
The New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, said matters were improving but remained a "disgrace."
The president of a local Louisiana parish, Aaron Broussard, broke down sobbing on the NBC program "Meet the Press" today as he talked about an elderly woman who drowned while awaiting repeatedly promised help.
"Nobody's coming to get us," Mr. Broussard said, his head sagging. "The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sake, shut up and send us somebody."
Mr. Bush, criticized even by some supporters for failing to respond more decisively, has ordered additional active-duty troops to the region, and sent top cabinet members there to help guide still-unfinished rescue work.
He dropped his own plans for Labor Day on Monday, saying he would return to Louisiana and Mississippi, and overhauled his month's schedule, canceling a long-anticipated visit by President Hu Jintao of China.
White House advisers scrambled to confront a confluence of critical challenges - including the hurricane, sagging support for the Iraq war and record-high gasoline prices - that politicians say could severely challenge his second-term legislative plans.
The politics of an already-charged season appeared suddenly overshadowed by the depths of the hurricane disaster.
Even the scripts of Sept. 11 commemorations next Sunday may have to be rewritten, as one of the most fundamental lessons Americans thought their leaders had learned - that mountains needed to be moved to prepare for the unexpected - seemed to some to have fallen short.
The secretary of health and human services, Michael Leavitt, said Sunday that Katrina's death toll almost surely was in the thousands.
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, warned that already-shocked Americans needed to brace for worse as waters recede, baring the full extent of death and destruction.
Meanwhile, Mr. Chertoff said, work was continuing at an almost unimaginable scale, "basically moving the city of New Orleans to other parts of the country." But he added, "I think we are in control of what's going on in the city."
The first major opinion poll since the disaster showed ambivalent feelings toward Mr. Bush's handling of it, far less positive than the near-universal support he received in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. An ABC poll found that 46 percent of Americans approved of Bush's handling of the crisis, almost exactly half his 91 percent approval rating after Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush sent several top advisers to the region, including Mr. Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as federal and state authorities reportedly wrestled behind the scenes over which had ultimate authority in the crisis area.
Mr. Chertoff's department has been harshly criticized for the federal failure to prepare adequately for a possible disaster that some emergency officials, and The Times Picayune of New Orleans, had anticipated with eerie precision years ago.
A proposal to detach the Federal Emergency Management Administration from Homeland Security is to be introduced this week in Congress. Some critics say that the Homeland Security takeover of FEMA added a harmful layer of bureaucracy.
Others have questioned the FEMA leadership of Michael Brown, whose background in law, finance and public service includes no prior emergency-management experience.
Mr. Chertoff in turn seemed to cast some blame elsewhere. He said earlier that "our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."
Today, Senator Landrieu, a Democrat whose father, Moon Landrieu, was once the mayor of New Orleans, dropped her earlier reserve about criticizing federal failings.
Mr. Bush had said that the enormousness of the crisis had "strained state and local capabilities."
Local authorities took this as a deeply unjustified criticism, and a distraught Ms. Landrieu said that if she heard any more criticism from federal officials, particularly about the evacuation of New Orleans, she might lose control.
"If one person criticizes them or says one more thing - including the president of the United States - he will hear from me," she said on the ABC program "This Week." "One more word about it after this show airs and I might likely have to punch him. Literally."
She also referred angrily to comments Mr. Bush had made Friday at the New Orleans airport about the fun he had had there in his younger days.
"Our infrastructure is devastated, lives have been shattered," Ms. Landrieu said during a helicopter tour of the area with an ABC interviewer. "Would the president please stop taking photo-ops?"
Mr. Chertoff warned that Americans, already horrified by scenes of misery and chaos in New Orleans, should brace for worse.
"I think we need to prepare the country for what's coming," he told Fox News. As waters recede, "we're going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, you know, got caught by the flood, people whose remains are going to be found in the streets," he said.
"It's going to be about as ugly a scene as I think you can imagine. Certainly as ugly of a scene as we've seen in this country, with the possible exception of 9/11."
The New Orleans mayor, Nagin, who last week lashed out at federal authorities in an expletive-laced outburst, told reporters on Saturday that while he regretted his language, he was still frustrated by the federal response. "We're still fighting over authority," he said. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and the federal government are doing a two-step dance."
He added, "I think it's getting better, but the pace is still not sufficient."
In Washington, even some Republicans have warned that the much-assailed White House response could undermine Bush's authority and his legislative agenda, including plans to overhaul the tax code, Social Security and immigration law.
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said that Mr. Bush's handling of the crisis could, if it is seen to improve, re-energize his plans. Otherwise, "it swamps the rest of his agenda."
But the government message has found itself struggling for time on the airwaves against angry criticisms like Ms. Landrieu's, and anguished cries for help, like that of Mr. Broussard, the local official who broke down sobbing on NBC.
"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything," Mr. Broussard said. "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night.
"Nobody's coming to get us," he said through his tears. "Nobody's coming to get us."
Ms. Landrieu warned of the risk to nearly submerged railways lines that serve a wide area of the country. Another hurricane, she said, would have calamitous effect.
"We are one storm away from disaster," she said, looking forward. "Doesn't anybody hear us?"
Falluja Floods the Superdome
By FRANK RICH
AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.
As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.
After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."
This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.
Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.
The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said, "There won't have to be tax increases."
But on a second go-round, even the right isn't so easily fooled by this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found much reassurance in Mr. Bush's initial autopilot statement about the hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn't be obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11 national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more pronounced.
You could almost see Mr. Bush's political base starting to crumble at its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja.
A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.
In that sense, the inequality of the suffering has not only exposed the sham of the relentless photo-ops with black schoolchildren whom the president trots out at campaign time to sell his "compassionate conservatism"; it has also positioned Katrina before a rapt late-summer audience as a replay of the sinking of the Titanic. New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.
THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.
On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.
But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.
Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.
The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.
AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.
As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.
After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."
This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.
Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.
The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said, "There won't have to be tax increases."
But on a second go-round, even the right isn't so easily fooled by this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found much reassurance in Mr. Bush's initial autopilot statement about the hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn't be obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11 national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more pronounced.
You could almost see Mr. Bush's political base starting to crumble at its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja.
A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.
In that sense, the inequality of the suffering has not only exposed the sham of the relentless photo-ops with black schoolchildren whom the president trots out at campaign time to sell his "compassionate conservatism"; it has also positioned Katrina before a rapt late-summer audience as a replay of the sinking of the Titanic. New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.
THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.
On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.
But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.
Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.
The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Times editorial - Miriam V.
Katrina's Assault on Washington - New York Times
The New York Times
September 3, 2005
Katrina's Assault on Washington
Do not be misled by Congress's approval of $10.5 billion in relief for the
Hurricane Katrina victims. That's prompted by the graphic shock of the news
coverage
from New Orleans and the region, where the devastation catapults daily, in
heartbreaking contrast with the slo-mo bumblings of government.
There are dozens of questions Americans will demand to have answered once
this emergency has passed. If the Homeland Security Department was so ill
prepared
for a natural disaster that everyone knew was coming, how is it equipped to
handle other kinds of crises? Has the war in Iraq drained the nation of
resources
that it needs for things like flood prevention? Is the National Guard ready
to handle a disaster that might be even worse, like a biological or nuclear
attack?
One thing is certain: if President Bush and his Republican Congressional
leaders want to deal responsibly with a historic disaster of this scale,
they must
finally try the path of honestly shared national sacrifice. If they respond
by passing a few emergency measures and then falling back on their plans to
enact more tax cuts, America will have to confront the fact that it is stuck
with leaders who neither know, nor care, how to lead.
The pre-Katrina plan for this Congressional season was to enact more
upper-bracket tax cuts for the least needy, while cutting into the
safety-net programs
for sick and impoverished Americans. These are the very entitlement programs
most needed by the sudden underclass of hundreds of thousands of hurricane
refugees cast adrift like Dustbowl Okies. Will Congress dare to go forward
with these retrogressive plans in the face of the suffering from Katrina?
Its
woeful track record suggests that, shockingly, the answer may be yes.
G.O.P. leaders are set to mandate billions in Medicaid and antipoverty cuts
this month, while the Senate is poised to try again to repeal the estate
tax,
a monumental folly that will deprive the deficit-ridden government of an
estimated $750 billion in vital revenue in the first decade. The theory is
that
over the long run, the missing money will "starve the beast" and force
Washington to make huge cuts in federal programs. The public has never
bought this,
but as long as the economy held up, it was willing to ignore the long-term
implications.
That can't be the case now, when those implications are sitting in filthy
refugee centers, when the streets of New Orleans are under water and when
the
nation must take care of hundreds of thousands of homeless people. Yet
President Bush has still managed to repeat his no-taxes mantra.
Senator Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat, is now fighting for every
available dollar to restore her state. Republicans had been wooing Ms.
Landrieu
as a possible supporter of the estate tax repeal. Now, we presume, she has
higher priorities.
Washington's inspiration must now be the individual rescuers in New Orleans,
who have labored so bravely and selflessly, as well as the charitable deeds
of local and state governments. Houston's offer of shelter at the Astrodome
has put self-regarding national politicians to shame.
Congress and the president had better get the message: an extraordinary time
is upon the nation. The annihilation in New Orleans is an irrefutable sign
that the national tax-cut party is over. So is the idea that American voters
cannot be required to accept sacrifice or inconvenience, no matter how great
the crisis. This country is better than that.
United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.
Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "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."
Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
Who are we if we can't take care of our own?
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.
Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "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."
Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
Who are we if we can't take care of our own?
BUSH STRAFES NEW ORLEANS
by Greg Palast
Friday, September 2, 2005
The National Public Radio news anchor was so excited I thought she'd piss on
herself: the President of the United had flown his plane down to 1700 feet to
get a better look at the flood damage! And there was a photo of our
Commander-in-Chief taken looking out the window. He looked very serious and
concerned.
That was yesterday. Today he played golf. No kidding.
I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation
for the official Presidential photo-strafing, but their surface-to-air missiles
were wet.
There is nothing new under the sun. In 1927, a Republican President had his
photo taken as the Mississippi rolled over New Orleans. Calvin Coolidge, "a
little fat man with a notebook in his hand," promised to rebuild the state. He
didn't. Instead, he left to play golf with Ken Lay or the Ken Lay railroad
baron equivalent of his day.
In 1927, the Democratic Party had died and was awaiting burial. As depression
approached, the coma-Dems, like Franklin Roosevelt, called for balancing the
budget.
Then, as the waters rose, one politician finally said, roughly, "Screw this!
They're lying! The President's lying! The rich fat cats that are drowning you
will do it again and again and again. They lead you into imperialist wars for
profit, they take away your schools and your hope and when you complain, they
blame Blacks and Jews and immigrants. Then they push your kids under. I say,
Kick'm in the ass and take your rightful share!"
Huey Long laid out a plan: a progressive income tax, real money for education,
public works to rebuild Louisiana and America, an end to wars for empire, and an
end to financial oligarchy. The waters receded, the anger did not, and Huey
"Kingfish" Long was elected Governor of Louisiana in 1928.
At the time, Louisiana schools were free, but not the textbooks. Governor Long
taxed Big Oil to pay for the books. Rockefeller's oil companies refused pay the
textbook tax, so Long ordered the National Guard to seize Standard Oil's fields
in the Delta.
Huey Long was called a "demagogue" and a "dictator." Of course. Because it was
Huey Long who established the concept that a government of the people must
protect the people, school, house, and feed them and give every man or woman a
job who needs one.
Government, he said, "We The People," not plutocrats nor Halliburtons, must
build bridges and levies to keep the waters from rising over our heads. All we
had to do was share the nation's wealth we created as a nation. But that meant
facing down what he called the "concentrations of monopoly power" to finance the
needs of the public.
In other words, Huey Long founded the modern Democratic Party. Franklin
Roosevelt and the party establishment, scared senseless of Long's ineluctable
march to the White House, adopted his program, called it the New Deal, and later
The New Frontier and the Great Society.
America and the party prospered.
America could use a Democratic Party again and there's a rumor it's alive --
somewhere.
And now is the moment, as it was in '27. As the bodies float in the streets of
New Orleans, now is not the time for the Democrats to shirk and slink away,
bleating they can't "politicize" this avoidable disaster.
Seventy-six years ago this week, Huey Long was shot down, assassinated at the
age of 43. But the legacy of his combat remains, from Social Security to
veterans' mortgage loans.
There is no such thing as a "natural" disaster. Hurricanes happen, but death
comes from official neglect, from tax cuts for the rich that cut the heart out
of public protection. The corpses in the street are victims of a class war in
which only one side has a general.
Where is our Huey Long? America needs just one Kingfish to stand up and say
that our nation must rid itself of the scarecrow with the idiot chuckle, who has
left America broken and in danger while he plays tinker-toy Napoleon on other
continents.
I realize that the middle of rising flood is a hell of a bad time to give
Democrats swimming lessons; but it's act up now or we all go under.
Friday, September 2, 2005
The National Public Radio news anchor was so excited I thought she'd piss on
herself: the President of the United had flown his plane down to 1700 feet to
get a better look at the flood damage! And there was a photo of our
Commander-in-Chief taken looking out the window. He looked very serious and
concerned.
That was yesterday. Today he played golf. No kidding.
I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation
for the official Presidential photo-strafing, but their surface-to-air missiles
were wet.
There is nothing new under the sun. In 1927, a Republican President had his
photo taken as the Mississippi rolled over New Orleans. Calvin Coolidge, "a
little fat man with a notebook in his hand," promised to rebuild the state. He
didn't. Instead, he left to play golf with Ken Lay or the Ken Lay railroad
baron equivalent of his day.
In 1927, the Democratic Party had died and was awaiting burial. As depression
approached, the coma-Dems, like Franklin Roosevelt, called for balancing the
budget.
Then, as the waters rose, one politician finally said, roughly, "Screw this!
They're lying! The President's lying! The rich fat cats that are drowning you
will do it again and again and again. They lead you into imperialist wars for
profit, they take away your schools and your hope and when you complain, they
blame Blacks and Jews and immigrants. Then they push your kids under. I say,
Kick'm in the ass and take your rightful share!"
Huey Long laid out a plan: a progressive income tax, real money for education,
public works to rebuild Louisiana and America, an end to wars for empire, and an
end to financial oligarchy. The waters receded, the anger did not, and Huey
"Kingfish" Long was elected Governor of Louisiana in 1928.
At the time, Louisiana schools were free, but not the textbooks. Governor Long
taxed Big Oil to pay for the books. Rockefeller's oil companies refused pay the
textbook tax, so Long ordered the National Guard to seize Standard Oil's fields
in the Delta.
Huey Long was called a "demagogue" and a "dictator." Of course. Because it was
Huey Long who established the concept that a government of the people must
protect the people, school, house, and feed them and give every man or woman a
job who needs one.
Government, he said, "We The People," not plutocrats nor Halliburtons, must
build bridges and levies to keep the waters from rising over our heads. All we
had to do was share the nation's wealth we created as a nation. But that meant
facing down what he called the "concentrations of monopoly power" to finance the
needs of the public.
In other words, Huey Long founded the modern Democratic Party. Franklin
Roosevelt and the party establishment, scared senseless of Long's ineluctable
march to the White House, adopted his program, called it the New Deal, and later
The New Frontier and the Great Society.
America and the party prospered.
America could use a Democratic Party again and there's a rumor it's alive --
somewhere.
And now is the moment, as it was in '27. As the bodies float in the streets of
New Orleans, now is not the time for the Democrats to shirk and slink away,
bleating they can't "politicize" this avoidable disaster.
Seventy-six years ago this week, Huey Long was shot down, assassinated at the
age of 43. But the legacy of his combat remains, from Social Security to
veterans' mortgage loans.
There is no such thing as a "natural" disaster. Hurricanes happen, but death
comes from official neglect, from tax cuts for the rich that cut the heart out
of public protection. The corpses in the street are victims of a class war in
which only one side has a general.
Where is our Huey Long? America needs just one Kingfish to stand up and say
that our nation must rid itself of the scarecrow with the idiot chuckle, who has
left America broken and in danger while he plays tinker-toy Napoleon on other
continents.
I realize that the middle of rising flood is a hell of a bad time to give
Democrats swimming lessons; but it's act up now or we all go under.
Friday, September 02, 2005
from Fact Check.Org - Miriam V.
Is Bush to Blame for New Orleans Flooding?
He did slash funding for levee projects. But the Army Corps of Engineers
says Katrina was just too strong.
September 2, 2005
Summary
Some critics are suggesting President Bush was as least partly responsible
for the flooding in New Orleans. In a widely quoted opinion piece, former
Clinton
aide Sidney Blumenthal says that "the damage wrought by the hurricane may
not entirely be the result of an act of nature," and cites years of reduced
funding
for federal flood-control projects around New Orleans.
Our fact-checking confirms that Bush indeed cut funding for projects
specifically designed to strengthen levees. Indeed, local officials had been
complaining
about that for years.
It is not so clear whether the money Bush cut from levee projects would have
made any difference, however, and we're not in a position to judge that. The
Army Corps of Engineers - which is under the President's command and has its
own reputation to defend - insists that Katrina was just too strong, and
that
even if the levee project had been completed it was only designed to
withstand a category 3 hurricane.
Analysis
We suspect this subject will get much more attention in Congress and
elsewhere in the coming months. Without blaming or absolving Bush, here are
the key
facts we've been able to establish so far:
Bush Cut Funding
Blumenthal's much-quoted article in salon.com carried the headline: "No one
can say they didn't see it coming." And it said the Bush administration cut
flood-control funding "to pay for the Iraq war."
He continues:
Block quote start
Blumenthal: With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans
has become part of the Gulf of Mexico . But the damage wrought by the
hurricane
may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
.By 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried
up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut
funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80
percent.
Additional cuts at the beginning of this year.forced the New Orleans
district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze.
Block quote end
We can confirm that funding was cut. The project most closely associated
with preventing flooding in New Orleans was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
' Hurricane
Protection Project, which was "designed to protect residents between Lake
Pontchartrain and the Missisippi River levee from surges in Lake
Pontchartrain,"
according to a
fact sheet
from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (The fact sheet is dated May 23, long
before Katrina). The multi-decade project involved building new levees,
enlarging
existing levees, and updating other protections like floodwalls. It was
scheduled to be completed in 2015.
Over at least the past several budget cycles, the Corps has received
substantially less money than it requested for the Lake Pontchartrain
project, even
though Congress restored much of the money the President cut from the amount
the Corps requested.
In fiscal year 2004, the Corps requested $11 million for the project. The
President's budget allocated $3 million, and Congress furnished $5.5
million.
Similarly, in fiscal 2005 the Corps requested $22.5 million, which the
President cut to $3.9 million in his budget. Congress increased that to $5.5
million.
"This was insufficient to fund new construction contracts," according to a
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project fact sheet. The Corps reported that
"seven
new contracts are being delayed due to lack funds" [sic].
The President proposed $3 million for the project in the budget for fiscal
2006, which begins Oct. 1. "This will be insufficient to fund new
construction
projects," the fact sheet stated. It says the Corps "could spend $20 million
if funds were provided." The Corps of Engineers goes on to say:
Block quote start
Army Corps of Engineers, May 23: In Orleans Parish, two major pump stations
are threatened by hurricane storm surges. Major contracts need to be awarded
to provide fronting protection for them. Also, several levees have settled
and need to be raised to provide the design protection. The current funding
shortfalls in fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006 will prevent the Corps
from addressing these pressing needs.
Block quote end
The Corps has seen cutbacks beyond those affecting just the Lake
Pontchartrain project. The Corps oversees SELA, or the Southeast Louisiana
Urban Flood
Control project, which Congress authorized after six people died from
flooding in May 1995. The Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans reported
that,
overall, the Corps had spent $430 million on flood control and hurricane
prevention, with local governments offering more than $50 million toward the
project.
Nonetheless, "at least $250 million in crucial projects remained," the
newspaper said.
In the past five years, the amount of money spent on all Corps construction
projects in the New Orleans district has declined by 44 percent, according
to
the New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper, from $147 million in 2001 to $82
million in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
A long history of complaints
Local officials had long complained that funding for hurricane protection
projects was inadequate:
List of 3 items
. October 13, 2001: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that "federal
officials are postponing new projects of the Southeast Louisiana Flood
Control
Program, or SELA, fearing that federal budget constraints and the cost of
the war on terrorism may create a financial pinch for the program." The
paper
went on to report that "President Bush's budget proposed $52 million" for
SELA in the 2002 fiscal year. The House approved $57 million and the Senate
approved
$62 million. Still, "the $62 million would be well below the $80 million
that corps officials estimate is needed to pay for the next 12 months of
construction,
as well as design expenses for future projects."
. April 24, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that "less money is available
to the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees and water projects in the
Missisippi
River valley this year and next year." Meanwhile, an engineer who had direct
the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study - a study of how to
restore coastal wetlands areas in order to provide a bugger from hurricane
storm surges - was sent to Iraq "to oversee the restoration of the 'Garden
of
Eden' wetlands at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers," for which
President Bush's 2005 gave $100 million.
. June 8, 2004: Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
Parish, told the Times-Picayune:
list end
Block quote start
Block quote start
Walter Maestri: 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.
Block quote end
Block quote end
List of 2 items
. September 22, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that a pilot study on
raising the height of the levees surrounding New Orleans had been completed
and
generated enough information for a second study necessary to estimate the
cost of doing so. The Bush administration "ordered the New Orleans district
office"
of the Army Corps of Engineers "not to begin any new studies, and the 2005
budget no longer includes the needed money."
. June 6, 2005: The New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper reported that the New
Orleans district of the Corps was preparing for a $71.2 million reduction in
overall funding for the fiscal year beginning in October. That would have
been the largest single-year funding loss ever. They noted that money "was
so
tight" that "the New Orleans district, which employs 1,300 people,
instituted a hiring freeze last month on all positions," which was "the
first of its
kind in about 10 years."
list end
Block quote start
Would Increased Funding Have Prevented Flooding?
Block quote end
Blumenthal implies that increased funding might have helped to prevent the
catastrophic flooding that New Orleans now faces. The White House denies
that,
and the Corps of Engineers says that even the levee project they were
working to complete was not designed to withstand a storm of Katrina's
force.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, at a press briefing on
September 1, dismissed the idea that the President inadequately funded flood
control
projects in New Orleans :
Block quote start
McClellan: Flood control has been a priority of this administration from day
one. We have dedicated an additional $300 million over the last few years
for
flood control in New Orleans and the surrounding area. And if you look at
the overall funding levels for the Army Corps of Engineers, they have been
slightly
above $4.5 billion that has been signed by the President.
Q: Local people were asking for more money over the last couple of years.
They were quoted in local papers in 2003 and 2004, are saying that they were
told
by federal officials there wasn't enough money because it was going to Iraq
expenditures.
McClellan: You might want to talk to General Strock, who is the commander of
the Army Corps of Engineers, because I think he's talked to some reporters
already and talked about some of these issues. I think some people maybe
have tried to make a suggestion or imply that certain funding would have
prevented
the flooding from happening, and he has essentially said there's been
nothing to suggest that whatsoever, and it's been more of a design issue
with the
levees.
Block quote end
We asked the Corps about that "design issue." David Hewitt, a spokesman for
the Army Corps of Engineers, said McClellan was referring to the fact that
"the
levees were designed for a category 3 hurricane." He told us that,
consequently, "when it became apparent that this was a category 5 hurricane,
an evacuation
of the city was ordered." (A category 3 storm has sustained winds of no more
than 130 miles per hour, while a category 5 storm has winds exceeding 155
miles per hour. Katrina had winds of 160 mph as it approached shore, but
later weakened to winds of 140 mph as it made landfall, making it a strong
category
4 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center.)
The levee upgrade project around Lake Pontchartrain was only 60 to 90
percent complete across most areas of New Orleans as of the end of May,
according
to the Corps' May 23 fact sheet. Still, even if it had been completed, the
project's goal was protecting New Orleans from storm surges up to "a
fast-moving
Category 3 hurricane," according to the fact sheet.
We don't know whether the levees would have done better had the work been
completed. But the Corps says that even a completed levee project wasn't
designed
for the storm that actually occurred.
Nobody anticipated breach of the levees?
In an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" on September 1, President
Bush said:
Block quote start
Bush: I don't think anyone anticipated breach of the levees .Now we're
having to deal with it, and will.
Block quote end
Bush is technically correct that a "breach" wasn't anticipated by the Corps,
but that's doesn't mean the flooding wasn't forseen. It was. But the Corps
thought it would happen differently, from water washing over the levees,
rather than cutting wide breaks in them.
Greg Breerword, a deputy district engineer for project management with the
Army Corps of Engineers, told the New York Times:
Block quote start
Breerword: We knew if it was going to be a Category 5, some levees and some
flood walls would be overtopped. We never did think they would actually be
breached.
Block quote end
And while Bush is also technically correct that the Corps did not
"anticipate" a breach - in the sense that they believed it was a likely
event - at least
some in the Corps thought a breach was a possibility worth examining.
According to the Times-Picayune, early in Bush's first term FEMA director
Joe Allbaugh ordered a sophisticated computer simulation of what would
happen
if a category 5 storm hit New Orleans. Joseph Suhayda, an engineer at
Louisana State University who worked on the project, described to the
newspaper in
2002 what the simulation showed could happen:
Block quote start
Subhayda: Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail. It's
not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as levees broke, the
break
will get wider and wider. The water will flow through the city and stop only
when it reaches the next higher thing. The most continuous barrier is the
south levee, along the river. That's 25 feet high, so you'll see the water
pile up on the river levee.
Block quote end
Whether or not a "breach" was "anticipated," the fact is that many
individuals have been warning for decades about the threat of flooding that
a hurricane
could pose to a set below sea level and sandwiched between major waterways.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report from before September
11,
2001 detailed the three most likely catastrophic disasters that could happen
in the United States: a terrorist attack in New York, a strong earthquake
in San Francisco, and a hurricane strike in New Orleans. In 2002, New
Orleans officials held the simulation of what would happen in a category 5
storm.
Walter Maestri, the emergency coordinator of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans
, recounted the outcome to PBS' NOW With Bill Moyers:
Block quote start
Maestri, September 2002: Well, when the exercise was completed it was
evidence that we were going to lose a lot of people. We changed the name of
the [simulated]
storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B... kiss your ass goodbye... because anybody
who was here as that category five storm came across... was gone.
Block quote end
--by Matthew Barge
'I Need Reinforcements'
AlterNet
By Ray Nagin, WWL Radio
Posted on September 2, 2005, Printed on September 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/24977/
[This is a partial transcript of an interview between WWL Radio's Garland Robinette and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin gives the most candid, honest appraisal of the situation in New Orleans by any politician yet. At times pleading and often angry, Nagin's interview is a must-hear.]
Garland Robinette: What do you need, right now, to get control of this situation?
I need reinforcements, I need troops. I need 500 buses. One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting the public-school bus drivers to come down here to bus people out of here. You've got to be kidding me -- this is a national disaster, get every dog-gone Greyhound Bus Line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans!
They're thinking small, man, and this is a major, major, major deal! And I can't emphasize it enough man, this is crazy! I've got 15-20,000 people over at the convention center, it's bursting at the seams, the poor people in Plaquemines parrish, they're AirEvacing people over here in New Orleans. We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines parrish. It is awful down here, man!
Do you believe the President is seeing this, holding news conferences on it, but can't do anything until Kathleen Blanco requests him to do it, and do you know whether or not she has made that request?
I have no idea what they're doing, but I will tell you this: God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price, because every day that we delay, people are dying, and they are dying by the hundreds I'm willing to bet you.
We are getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, 'I've been in my attic, I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck, I don't think I can hold out.' And that's happening as we speak. You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, 'Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do, figure it out.'
Who'd you say that to?
Everybody, the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA, you name it we said it. And they allowed that pumping station next to it, Pumping Station 6, to go under water. Our sewage and water board people stayed there and endangered their lives. And what happened what that pumping station went down the water started flowing again into the city, and it started getting to levels that probably killed more people. In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city, that's a power station over there. So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parrish. A critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.
[...]
In a state of emergency, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done. They told me they went overnight and they built 17 concrete structures and they the pulleys on them and were going to drop them, I flew over that thing yesterday and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening, and they're feeding the public a line of bull, and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.
Garland Robinette is an anchor on WWL Radio 870 AM in New Orleans, Louisiana.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24977/
By Ray Nagin, WWL Radio
Posted on September 2, 2005, Printed on September 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/24977/
[This is a partial transcript of an interview between WWL Radio's Garland Robinette and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin gives the most candid, honest appraisal of the situation in New Orleans by any politician yet. At times pleading and often angry, Nagin's interview is a must-hear.]
Garland Robinette: What do you need, right now, to get control of this situation?
I need reinforcements, I need troops. I need 500 buses. One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting the public-school bus drivers to come down here to bus people out of here. You've got to be kidding me -- this is a national disaster, get every dog-gone Greyhound Bus Line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans!
They're thinking small, man, and this is a major, major, major deal! And I can't emphasize it enough man, this is crazy! I've got 15-20,000 people over at the convention center, it's bursting at the seams, the poor people in Plaquemines parrish, they're AirEvacing people over here in New Orleans. We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines parrish. It is awful down here, man!
Do you believe the President is seeing this, holding news conferences on it, but can't do anything until Kathleen Blanco requests him to do it, and do you know whether or not she has made that request?
I have no idea what they're doing, but I will tell you this: God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price, because every day that we delay, people are dying, and they are dying by the hundreds I'm willing to bet you.
We are getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, 'I've been in my attic, I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck, I don't think I can hold out.' And that's happening as we speak. You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, 'Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do, figure it out.'
Who'd you say that to?
Everybody, the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA, you name it we said it. And they allowed that pumping station next to it, Pumping Station 6, to go under water. Our sewage and water board people stayed there and endangered their lives. And what happened what that pumping station went down the water started flowing again into the city, and it started getting to levels that probably killed more people. In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city, that's a power station over there. So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parrish. A critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.
[...]
In a state of emergency, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done. They told me they went overnight and they built 17 concrete structures and they the pulleys on them and were going to drop them, I flew over that thing yesterday and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening, and they're feeding the public a line of bull, and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.
Garland Robinette is an anchor on WWL Radio 870 AM in New Orleans, Louisiana.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24977/
Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush
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.
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.
from Ameericn Family VOices - Miriam V.
Another set of documents relating to John Roberts' earlier career as a
Reagan administration lawyer has been released from the National Archives,
and this
one contains some inflammatory comments about Congress. In 1983, plans were
circulating to create a new appeals court to reduce the workload of the
Supreme
Court, an idea favored by many congressional leaders. But in a letter to a
federal appellate court judge, Roberts, who opposed the plan, huffed, "Out
only
hope is that Congress will continue to do what it does best - nothing." In
another document, Roberts also disagreed with Congress' decision to award
the
late Rep. Leo Ryan a Congressional Gold Medal after he was killed
investigating the cult run by Jim Jones. Roberts wrote that the "actions
leading to his
murder can be viewed as those of a publicity hound."
[link]
list end
Who Says That?
"It looks like a lot of that place [New Orleans] could be bulldozed." -
House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), displaying excellent timing and
unparalleled
compassion as thousands of people who call New Orleans home scramble to put
their lives back together. Hastert said of rebuilding the city, "We ought to
take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San
Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild too. Stubbornness."
A Global Warming Wake-Up Call
Was Katrina caused by global warming? The answer is: Probably not. But was climate change enough to turbo charge the storm to a category five? That's entirely likely. Some would argue, a certainty.
Here's the thing: Global warming doesn't make the weather we experience. It makes the weather we experience stronger. It turns droughts, heat waves, blizzards and, yes, hurricanes up to eleven. And sometimes 12, and 13. Whether Katrina, like Ivan before her, was the specific product of global warming is not a fruitful debate. It's unknowable. But what can be said with real certainty, is that unless we work to reverse course on our carbon emissions, we will see more storms like the one that ravaged the Gulf Coast this week.
President Bush said at the end of June that the Kyoto accord would have "wrecked" the American economy. But we're now staring at tens of billions of insured losses from a single storm. Billions more that are going to have to come from the federal government to repair highways, oil infrastructure, and assorted destruction.
We're going to pay to fight global warming one way or another. Hopefully this hurricane -- and the wrecked economy of the Gulf Coast -- helps us wake up to that fact.
Here's the thing: Global warming doesn't make the weather we experience. It makes the weather we experience stronger. It turns droughts, heat waves, blizzards and, yes, hurricanes up to eleven. And sometimes 12, and 13. Whether Katrina, like Ivan before her, was the specific product of global warming is not a fruitful debate. It's unknowable. But what can be said with real certainty, is that unless we work to reverse course on our carbon emissions, we will see more storms like the one that ravaged the Gulf Coast this week.
President Bush said at the end of June that the Kyoto accord would have "wrecked" the American economy. But we're now staring at tens of billions of insured losses from a single storm. Billions more that are going to have to come from the federal government to repair highways, oil infrastructure, and assorted destruction.
We're going to pay to fight global warming one way or another. Hopefully this hurricane -- and the wrecked economy of the Gulf Coast -- helps us wake up to that fact.
"COMPASSIONATE" CONSERVATIVE OF THE MOMENT
DENNY HASTERT OPENS HIS BIIIIIG MOUTH
Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert (R - IL), in a dazzling display of idiocy grumbled and groused over the funding of future rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Preferring to bulldoze most of the city damaged by Katrina rather than rebuild it, Hastert exposed his coal black heart.
"We help replace, we help relieve disaster," Hastert said. "But I think federal insurance and everything that goes along with it... we ought to take a second look at that."
Hastert's callousness didn't stop there, he also took a swipe at other places existing in 'dangerous' areas:
"You know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake issures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness," he said.
Stubbornness.
So then...Damn those Californians living in earthquake prone...California. Or how about those idiot Floridians, Alabamans, Texans, Mississippians, Georgians, North and South Carolinians and Virginians for living anywhere near the coast. Hurricanes hit the coasts, don't you know. Maybe we should be leery of those midwesterners that build their homes in Tornado alley. The Southwest suffers droughts...can't live there.
As refugees pour out of New Orleans carrying suitcases filled with their most valuable posessions;While the poor folks left behind ransack grocery stores for survival; And as a 400 year old city of historical, financial, and cultural significance is submerged at Atlantis level proportions, it's good to know the conservatives in Congress are exhibiting that fiscal restraint they're famous for. If only Hastert and the boys were this concerned with the $300 Billion black hole called Iraq.
Congratulations Speaker Hastert, you too are an A-1 Jackass!
Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert (R - IL), in a dazzling display of idiocy grumbled and groused over the funding of future rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Preferring to bulldoze most of the city damaged by Katrina rather than rebuild it, Hastert exposed his coal black heart.
"We help replace, we help relieve disaster," Hastert said. "But I think federal insurance and everything that goes along with it... we ought to take a second look at that."
Hastert's callousness didn't stop there, he also took a swipe at other places existing in 'dangerous' areas:
"You know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake issures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness," he said.
Stubbornness.
So then...Damn those Californians living in earthquake prone...California. Or how about those idiot Floridians, Alabamans, Texans, Mississippians, Georgians, North and South Carolinians and Virginians for living anywhere near the coast. Hurricanes hit the coasts, don't you know. Maybe we should be leery of those midwesterners that build their homes in Tornado alley. The Southwest suffers droughts...can't live there.
As refugees pour out of New Orleans carrying suitcases filled with their most valuable posessions;While the poor folks left behind ransack grocery stores for survival; And as a 400 year old city of historical, financial, and cultural significance is submerged at Atlantis level proportions, it's good to know the conservatives in Congress are exhibiting that fiscal restraint they're famous for. If only Hastert and the boys were this concerned with the $300 Billion black hole called Iraq.
Congratulations Speaker Hastert, you too are an A-1 Jackass!
As South drowns, Rice soaks in N.Y.
Did New Yorkers chase Condoleezza Rice back to Washington yesterday?
Like President Bush, the Secretary of State has been on vacation during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, with Rice enjoying her downtime in New York Wednesday and yesterday. The cabinet member's responsibilities are usually international, but her timing contributed to the "fiddling while Rome burns" impression given by her boss during the disaster, which may have claimed thousands of lives.
On Wednesday night, Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at "Spamalot!," the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.
Yesterday, Rice went shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth Ave. According to the Web site www.Gawker.com, the 50-year-old bought "several thousand dollars' worth of shoes" at the pricey leather-goods boutique.
A fellow shopper shouted, "How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!" - presumably referring to Louisiana and Mississippi.
The woman expressing her First Amendment rights was promptly removed from the store. A Ferragamo store manager confirmed to us that Rice did shop there yesterday, but refused to answer questions about whether the protester was removed, and whether by his own security or the Secret Service.
At the State Department's daily briefing yesterday morning, before the New York incident, spokesman Sean McCormack responded to a journalist who asked whether Rice was involved with hurricane relief efforts by saying, "She's in contact with the department as appropriate." He made no mention that his boss had any plans to leave New York.
But yesterday afternoon, Rice had done just that. Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore told us: "The secretary is back in Washington, and she is being briefed on the situation." Moore did not know whether Condi had planned a longer stay here.
Like President Bush, the Secretary of State has been on vacation during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, with Rice enjoying her downtime in New York Wednesday and yesterday. The cabinet member's responsibilities are usually international, but her timing contributed to the "fiddling while Rome burns" impression given by her boss during the disaster, which may have claimed thousands of lives.
On Wednesday night, Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at "Spamalot!," the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.
Yesterday, Rice went shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth Ave. According to the Web site www.Gawker.com, the 50-year-old bought "several thousand dollars' worth of shoes" at the pricey leather-goods boutique.
A fellow shopper shouted, "How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!" - presumably referring to Louisiana and Mississippi.
The woman expressing her First Amendment rights was promptly removed from the store. A Ferragamo store manager confirmed to us that Rice did shop there yesterday, but refused to answer questions about whether the protester was removed, and whether by his own security or the Secret Service.
At the State Department's daily briefing yesterday morning, before the New York incident, spokesman Sean McCormack responded to a journalist who asked whether Rice was involved with hurricane relief efforts by saying, "She's in contact with the department as appropriate." He made no mention that his boss had any plans to leave New York.
But yesterday afternoon, Rice had done just that. Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore told us: "The secretary is back in Washington, and she is being briefed on the situation." Moore did not know whether Condi had planned a longer stay here.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Even the Right wing notices...
From the Manchester Union Leader,:
Bush and Katrina:
A time for action, not aloofness
AS THE EXTENT of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation became clearer on Tuesday — millions without power, tens of thousands homeless, a death toll unknowable because rescue crews can’t reach some regions — President Bush carried on with his plans to speak in San Diego, as if nothing important had happened the day before.
Katrina already is measured as one of the worst storms in American history. And yet, President Bush decided that his plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VJ Day with a speech were more pressing than responding to the carnage.
A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.
The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty.
Wherever the old George W. Bush went, we sure wish we had him back.
Bush and Katrina:
A time for action, not aloofness
AS THE EXTENT of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation became clearer on Tuesday — millions without power, tens of thousands homeless, a death toll unknowable because rescue crews can’t reach some regions — President Bush carried on with his plans to speak in San Diego, as if nothing important had happened the day before.
Katrina already is measured as one of the worst storms in American history. And yet, President Bush decided that his plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VJ Day with a speech were more pressing than responding to the carnage.
A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.
The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty.
Wherever the old George W. Bush went, we sure wish we had him back.
From http://www.dailykos.com/
A Call To Action: http://www.dailykos.com/
ategory 4 Hurricane Determined to Strike U.S. -- Cont.
by Hunter
Thu Sep 1st, 2005 at 10:28:22 PDT
George W. Bush was once known as the C.E.O. President, a term his handlers eagerly coined in order to convey that the country would from now on be run like a business. That quickly evolved into the less flattering Enron President... then the War President... now it's looking like we can all finally settle on one. George W. Bush: the Disaster President.
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
He honestly said that. If that brings up more than a passing twinge of familiarity, being a more than remarkable restatement of Condi Rice's now-famous assertion to the Senate panel -- then I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.
But it does bring up something that we joke about often, but apparently have never taken quite seriously enough: our President is an idiot. I don't mean an average, run-of-the-mill idiot. I mean an idiot who apparently, for the entire duration of his presidency, literally was paying absolutely no attention to even the most life-threateningly critical tasks of government.
The administration specifically cut the funds to fix these specific levees, in order to specifically divert that Corps money to Iraq, despite urgent warnings and predictions of catastrophic disaster if the levees were breeched. The administration specifically cancelled the Clinton-backed flood control program to preserve and restore the wetlands between New Orleans and the gulf, instead specifically opening parts of that buffer zone for development.
Nobody anticipated this disaster? It was identified by FEMA as one of the top three likeliest major disasters to strike America. (That link, one of countless stories, was from 2001, by the way.) It has been a major disaster scenario for years. Everybody anticipated it, which makes this single statement by George W. Bush possibly the most dishonest, lying, craptacularly false thing he has ever said in his presidency -- even surpassing his now-infamous State of the Union Address. Truly, this is President Bush's blue-dress moment.
And yet, funneling the money into Iraq was more important. You better bet your crapulent, lying, one-track, drink-addled ass that's a political issue.
He also said today:
"I hope people don't play politics at this time of a natural disaster the likes of which this country has never seen."
Oh, I'm touched. Utterly touched. After 9/11, the entire Republican Party went en masse to get Twin Towers ass tattoos. The Republican convention was a wholesale tribute to crass exploitation, the sets themselves designed to evoke the aftermath of the attack. Every domestic and international policy this administration -- no, this entire Republican government -- has produced has been heaved up before the public while waving the spectre of 9/11 as the catch-all vindication of every administration whim. Every tax cut, every civil rights issue, every budget cut, every budget expansion, no matter how tortured the logic must be, has some Republican senator standing on the Senate floor and proudly raping the corpses of that day as justification for their particular agenda item.
Oh, we've seen politicization of disaster. Every Republican campaign for the last four years has revolved around the politicization of disaster.
But Lord help us, George W. Bush is going to get the vapors if anyone asks him to explain his administration's active cuts of the very programs designed to keep New Orleans safe.
ategory 4 Hurricane Determined to Strike U.S. -- Cont.
by Hunter
Thu Sep 1st, 2005 at 10:28:22 PDT
George W. Bush was once known as the C.E.O. President, a term his handlers eagerly coined in order to convey that the country would from now on be run like a business. That quickly evolved into the less flattering Enron President... then the War President... now it's looking like we can all finally settle on one. George W. Bush: the Disaster President.
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
He honestly said that. If that brings up more than a passing twinge of familiarity, being a more than remarkable restatement of Condi Rice's now-famous assertion to the Senate panel -- then I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.
But it does bring up something that we joke about often, but apparently have never taken quite seriously enough: our President is an idiot. I don't mean an average, run-of-the-mill idiot. I mean an idiot who apparently, for the entire duration of his presidency, literally was paying absolutely no attention to even the most life-threateningly critical tasks of government.
The administration specifically cut the funds to fix these specific levees, in order to specifically divert that Corps money to Iraq, despite urgent warnings and predictions of catastrophic disaster if the levees were breeched. The administration specifically cancelled the Clinton-backed flood control program to preserve and restore the wetlands between New Orleans and the gulf, instead specifically opening parts of that buffer zone for development.
Nobody anticipated this disaster? It was identified by FEMA as one of the top three likeliest major disasters to strike America. (That link, one of countless stories, was from 2001, by the way.) It has been a major disaster scenario for years. Everybody anticipated it, which makes this single statement by George W. Bush possibly the most dishonest, lying, craptacularly false thing he has ever said in his presidency -- even surpassing his now-infamous State of the Union Address. Truly, this is President Bush's blue-dress moment.
And yet, funneling the money into Iraq was more important. You better bet your crapulent, lying, one-track, drink-addled ass that's a political issue.
He also said today:
"I hope people don't play politics at this time of a natural disaster the likes of which this country has never seen."
Oh, I'm touched. Utterly touched. After 9/11, the entire Republican Party went en masse to get Twin Towers ass tattoos. The Republican convention was a wholesale tribute to crass exploitation, the sets themselves designed to evoke the aftermath of the attack. Every domestic and international policy this administration -- no, this entire Republican government -- has produced has been heaved up before the public while waving the spectre of 9/11 as the catch-all vindication of every administration whim. Every tax cut, every civil rights issue, every budget cut, every budget expansion, no matter how tortured the logic must be, has some Republican senator standing on the Senate floor and proudly raping the corpses of that day as justification for their particular agenda item.
Oh, we've seen politicization of disaster. Every Republican campaign for the last four years has revolved around the politicization of disaster.
But Lord help us, George W. Bush is going to get the vapors if anyone asks him to explain his administration's active cuts of the very programs designed to keep New Orleans safe.
Waiting for a Leader
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.
Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.
While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?
It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.
We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.
Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.
While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?
It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.
"Looting" or "finding"?
Bloggers are outraged over the different captions on photos of blacks and whites in New Orleans.
By Aaron Kinney
Sept. 1, 2005 | Two photographs of New Orleans residents wading through chest-deep water unleashed a wave of chatter among bloggers Wednesday about whether black people are being treated unfairly in media coverage of post-hurricane looting.
One of the images, shot by photographer Dave Martin for the Associated Press, shows a young black man wading through chest-deep waters after "looting" a grocery store, according to the caption. The young man appears to have a case of Pepsi under one arm and a full garbage bag in tow. In the other, similar shot, taken by photographer Chris Graythen for AFP/Getty Images, a white man and a light-skinned woman are shown wading through chest-deep water after "finding" goods including bread and soda, according to the caption, in a local grocery store.
The images were both published on Tuesday by Yahoo News. "We don't edit photo captions," Yahoo P.R. manager Brian Nelson told Salon. "Sometimes we take a look at the photos and we'll choose to pull photos, but the captions run as is." A search of AP and Getty's image databases confirms that Yahoo News did not alter either of the photo captions before posting them online.
Looting has become a serious problem in the aftermath of Katrina, and conditions in the area continue to be extremely challenging for everyone, journalists included. Bloggers were quick to raise allegations of insensitivity and racism regarding the disparity in the two captions -- but did they pass judgment too quickly? Not only did the photos come from separate outlets, bloggers had no knowledge of the circumstances in which the shots were taken, beyond what appeared in the published captions.
On Wednesday, D.C. Web gossip Wonkette suggested the Associated Press should apologize, while a blogger at Daily Kos commented alongside the juxtaposed images, "And don't forget. It's not looting if you're white."
"I am curious how one photographer knew the food was looted by one but not the other," wrote Boston Globe correspondent Christina Pazzanese, in a letter posted on media commentator Jim Romenesko's blog. "Were interviews conducted as they swam by? Should editors, in a rush to publish poignant or startling images, relax their standards or allow personal or regional biases creep into captions and stories?"
The AP database includes two other images from the same scene by photographer Dave Martin that refer to looters in the captions, though neither actually shows an explicit act of looting. Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."
Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography, told Salon that all captions are vetted by editors and are the result of a dialogue between editor and photographer. Lyon said AP's policy is that each photographer can describe only what he or she actually sees. He added, "When we see people go into businesses and come out with goods, we call it 'looting.'" On the other hand, he said, "When we just see them carrying things down the road, we call it 'carrying items.'"
Regarding the AFP/Getty "finding" photo by Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, "This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we're being careful with how we credit these photos." Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn't witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn't say they were looting.
But if he didn't witness an act of looting, how did Graythen determine where the items came from, or if they were "found"? "I wish I could tell you," Russel said. "I haven't been able to talk to Chris."
"The only thing I can tell you is they don't assume one way or another," she added.
Yahoo News published another photo Tuesday of a looting scene that caught bloggers' attention. This one, by AP photographer Bill Feig, shows a white man walking away from a looted convenience store, looking in a grocery bag, while a black man jumps out of the store's broken front window. The caption reads, "As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps through a broken window, while leaving a convenience store ... in Metairie, La." According to the caption, Feig shot the image while on a helicopter tour of Louisiana with Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
"I think it's fair to say that he described what he saw ... which is somebody going through their bag," Stokes said, affirming that Feig must not have seen the man with the grocery bag actually leaving the looted store.
Both Stokes and Russel said their photographers would be unable to comment further on the images for now, because of the chaos and poor communications conditions prevailing in New Orleans and the surrounding region.
The stakes remain high in the aftermath of this disaster, says Pazzanese. "Seems to me the national 'crisis mode' coverage of Katrina in a predominantly black, poor part of the country presents a number of professional challenges for everyone in the media around the subject of racial and economic sensitivity," she wrote on Romenesko. "Perhaps these photos will stimulate a media 'gut check' as we race to tell the stories of the thousands who lost their lives and livelihoods."
By Aaron Kinney
Sept. 1, 2005 | Two photographs of New Orleans residents wading through chest-deep water unleashed a wave of chatter among bloggers Wednesday about whether black people are being treated unfairly in media coverage of post-hurricane looting.
One of the images, shot by photographer Dave Martin for the Associated Press, shows a young black man wading through chest-deep waters after "looting" a grocery store, according to the caption. The young man appears to have a case of Pepsi under one arm and a full garbage bag in tow. In the other, similar shot, taken by photographer Chris Graythen for AFP/Getty Images, a white man and a light-skinned woman are shown wading through chest-deep water after "finding" goods including bread and soda, according to the caption, in a local grocery store.
The images were both published on Tuesday by Yahoo News. "We don't edit photo captions," Yahoo P.R. manager Brian Nelson told Salon. "Sometimes we take a look at the photos and we'll choose to pull photos, but the captions run as is." A search of AP and Getty's image databases confirms that Yahoo News did not alter either of the photo captions before posting them online.
Looting has become a serious problem in the aftermath of Katrina, and conditions in the area continue to be extremely challenging for everyone, journalists included. Bloggers were quick to raise allegations of insensitivity and racism regarding the disparity in the two captions -- but did they pass judgment too quickly? Not only did the photos come from separate outlets, bloggers had no knowledge of the circumstances in which the shots were taken, beyond what appeared in the published captions.
On Wednesday, D.C. Web gossip Wonkette suggested the Associated Press should apologize, while a blogger at Daily Kos commented alongside the juxtaposed images, "And don't forget. It's not looting if you're white."
"I am curious how one photographer knew the food was looted by one but not the other," wrote Boston Globe correspondent Christina Pazzanese, in a letter posted on media commentator Jim Romenesko's blog. "Were interviews conducted as they swam by? Should editors, in a rush to publish poignant or startling images, relax their standards or allow personal or regional biases creep into captions and stories?"
The AP database includes two other images from the same scene by photographer Dave Martin that refer to looters in the captions, though neither actually shows an explicit act of looting. Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."
Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography, told Salon that all captions are vetted by editors and are the result of a dialogue between editor and photographer. Lyon said AP's policy is that each photographer can describe only what he or she actually sees. He added, "When we see people go into businesses and come out with goods, we call it 'looting.'" On the other hand, he said, "When we just see them carrying things down the road, we call it 'carrying items.'"
Regarding the AFP/Getty "finding" photo by Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, "This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we're being careful with how we credit these photos." Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn't witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn't say they were looting.
But if he didn't witness an act of looting, how did Graythen determine where the items came from, or if they were "found"? "I wish I could tell you," Russel said. "I haven't been able to talk to Chris."
"The only thing I can tell you is they don't assume one way or another," she added.
Yahoo News published another photo Tuesday of a looting scene that caught bloggers' attention. This one, by AP photographer Bill Feig, shows a white man walking away from a looted convenience store, looking in a grocery bag, while a black man jumps out of the store's broken front window. The caption reads, "As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps through a broken window, while leaving a convenience store ... in Metairie, La." According to the caption, Feig shot the image while on a helicopter tour of Louisiana with Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
"I think it's fair to say that he described what he saw ... which is somebody going through their bag," Stokes said, affirming that Feig must not have seen the man with the grocery bag actually leaving the looted store.
Both Stokes and Russel said their photographers would be unable to comment further on the images for now, because of the chaos and poor communications conditions prevailing in New Orleans and the surrounding region.
The stakes remain high in the aftermath of this disaster, says Pazzanese. "Seems to me the national 'crisis mode' coverage of Katrina in a predominantly black, poor part of the country presents a number of professional challenges for everyone in the media around the subject of racial and economic sensitivity," she wrote on Romenesko. "Perhaps these photos will stimulate a media 'gut check' as we race to tell the stories of the thousands who lost their lives and livelihoods."
For Bush, a different kind of storm
The first real sign may have come Tuesday afternoon, when CNN's Jack Cafferty, in the middle of a somber exegesis on the devastation in New Orleans, interrupted himself to ask: "Where's President Bush? Is he still on vacation?" Wolf Blitzer said the president was preparing to head back to Washington early. "Oh, that would be a good idea," Cafferty said, his voice dripping with a condescending sort of sarcasm. "Based on his approval rating, based on the latest polls, my guess is getting back to work might not be a terrible idea."
It may have taken a hurricane to do it, but the press seems to have been blown into some kind of tipping point with George W. Bush. Bloggers have been mocking Bush all week for his slow, "Pet Goat"-like response to Hurricane Katrina -- it's hard to open a Web browser without seeing a picture of Bush smiling over a birthday cake or pretending to play a guitar while residents of New Orleans were fighting for their lives -- and now the mainstream media is getting in on the act.
On Wednesday, the New Hampshire Union Leader, which endorsed Bush in his run for reelection based largely on his response to 9/11, laid into the president hard for responding so slowly to Katrina. "A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease," the paper said. "The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty."
As Bush began to make his way back to Washington, Newsweek's Howard Fineman laid out the dismal political landscape that would be waiting for him on arrival. "His poll numbers already at near-record low levels, he will have to oversee the rescue of the Gulf in the midst of a changing climate in Washington," Fineman said. "The public's sense of where America is headed -- the 'right direction/wrong track' numbers -- are dismal. Gas prices are high and unsettling. Congressional Democrats, reluctant since 9/11 to take on a 'war president,' finally have decided to do so. And Republicans, knowing that they'll be facing the voters a year from now, are beginning to seek ways to distance themselves from him."
Did Bush turn things around with the speech he gave when he finally arrived back in Washington Wednesday afternoon? Hardly. In words that were blunt to the point of brutal, editorial writers at the New York Times called Bush's Rose Garden performance "one of the worst speeches of his life." "In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end." The Times said that Bush came off as "casual to the point of carelessness," and that "nothing about the president's demeanor" suggested that he "understood the depth of the current crisis."
Over at the Washington Post, the editorial writers are cautioning against assigning blame for a natural disaster. But in the process, they're doing something that looks an awful lot like it. "This administration has consistently played down the possibility of environmental disaster, in Louisiana and everywhere else," the Post says. "The president's most recent budgets have actually proposed reducing funding for flood prevention in the New Orleans area, and the administration has long ignored Louisiana politicians' requests for more help in protecting their fragile coast, the destruction of which meant there was little to slow down the hurricane before it hit the city. It is inappropriate to 'blame' anyone for a natural disaster. But given how frequently the impact of this one was predicted, and given the scale of the economic and human catastrophe that has resulted, it is certainly fair to ask questions about disaster preparations."
It may have taken a hurricane to do it, but the press seems to have been blown into some kind of tipping point with George W. Bush. Bloggers have been mocking Bush all week for his slow, "Pet Goat"-like response to Hurricane Katrina -- it's hard to open a Web browser without seeing a picture of Bush smiling over a birthday cake or pretending to play a guitar while residents of New Orleans were fighting for their lives -- and now the mainstream media is getting in on the act.
On Wednesday, the New Hampshire Union Leader, which endorsed Bush in his run for reelection based largely on his response to 9/11, laid into the president hard for responding so slowly to Katrina. "A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease," the paper said. "The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty."
As Bush began to make his way back to Washington, Newsweek's Howard Fineman laid out the dismal political landscape that would be waiting for him on arrival. "His poll numbers already at near-record low levels, he will have to oversee the rescue of the Gulf in the midst of a changing climate in Washington," Fineman said. "The public's sense of where America is headed -- the 'right direction/wrong track' numbers -- are dismal. Gas prices are high and unsettling. Congressional Democrats, reluctant since 9/11 to take on a 'war president,' finally have decided to do so. And Republicans, knowing that they'll be facing the voters a year from now, are beginning to seek ways to distance themselves from him."
Did Bush turn things around with the speech he gave when he finally arrived back in Washington Wednesday afternoon? Hardly. In words that were blunt to the point of brutal, editorial writers at the New York Times called Bush's Rose Garden performance "one of the worst speeches of his life." "In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end." The Times said that Bush came off as "casual to the point of carelessness," and that "nothing about the president's demeanor" suggested that he "understood the depth of the current crisis."
Over at the Washington Post, the editorial writers are cautioning against assigning blame for a natural disaster. But in the process, they're doing something that looks an awful lot like it. "This administration has consistently played down the possibility of environmental disaster, in Louisiana and everywhere else," the Post says. "The president's most recent budgets have actually proposed reducing funding for flood prevention in the New Orleans area, and the administration has long ignored Louisiana politicians' requests for more help in protecting their fragile coast, the destruction of which meant there was little to slow down the hurricane before it hit the city. It is inappropriate to 'blame' anyone for a natural disaster. But given how frequently the impact of this one was predicted, and given the scale of the economic and human catastrophe that has resulted, it is certainly fair to ask questions about disaster preparations."
Conservatives Helped This Happen
Posters Note: The devastation we are witnessing in the our own Gulf region is unbelievable and heart wrenching. The people of New Orleans and the entire area need our help and support to overcome this terrible event.
But the politicians and policies that helped to exacerbate the impact of the hurricane need to be exposed and held accountable. Again, the Administration's focus on pre-emptive wars, militarism and isolationist environmental interests have paid a ghastly dividend.
C. Herrera
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dan Pashman, Senior Producer, Morning Sedition, Air America Radio
"As terrible as it is, this attack could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. The ACLU's got to take a lot of the blame for this…The abortionists have got to bear some of the burden for this because God will not be mocked…I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians…all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen.'"
- Rev. Jerry Falwell, September 13, 2001
Who can forget Jerry Falwell's infamous post-9/11 indictment of America? 'You helped this happen,' Falwell said to the majority of Americans, who disagree with him on a majority of issues.
Now, a conservative group called Columbia Christians for Life has proclaimed that Hurricane Katrina was another one of God's punishments, citing as evidence the supposed resemblance between the hurricane's image on a weather map, and a fetus.
Trying to refute such claims from these zealots is truly an exercise in futility. But searching for explanations after a disaster of Katrina's magnitude is not. And if you do in fact search for those explanations, you'll reach an unavoidable conclusion:
Hurricane Katrina may have been an act of God. But the level of death and destruction it caused was not. That was an act of conservatism.
It is conservative policies that made this natural disaster unnaturally catastrophic. I say to conservatives, you have blood on your hands today. I point the finger in your face and say, "You helped this happen."
Conservative policies have led to an increase in poverty across the nation, especially in New Orleans, one of the poorest major cities in America. About 150,000 people in New Orleans lived below the poverty line before Katrina, 100,000 of them in abject poverty, making less than $8,000 a year. Their poverty left them with nowhere to go, and no means of escape, as the hurricane bore down on their homes.
Conservative policies have led to more global warming, which scientists agree has already begun producing more intense hurricanes and storms. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a former Republican Party Chairman and longtime GOP operative, has seen his own state ravaged by Katrina. But he was vital in helping to convince the Bush administration to squash the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and pushed Bush to go back on his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide. Governor Barbour would dare express grief over the deaths that he himself enabled.
Conservative policies have led to a war in Iraq based on lies, and tax cuts for the rich, both of which, we know for a fact, took money directly away from vital hurricane preparedness work in New Orleans. On nine occasions in 2004 and 2005, The New Orleans Times-Picayune specifically cited the cost of the Iraq War as a reason for the shortfall in hurricane- and flood-control funds. The levees that gave way under Katrina's pressure were supposed to be upgraded with money that ended up in Halliburton’s coffers.
Conservative policies have also led to the National Guard's misuse and abuse, leaving the Gulf Coast without the personnel and equipment vital to a recovery effort of this magnitude. More people will die on the Gulf Coast as they await their would-be saviors, who are in Iraq, victims themselves of conservative policies.
There can be no doubt that while Hurricane Katrina was not preventable, much of the death and destruction left in its wake was. I say to conservatives, you have blood on your hands today. I point the finger in your face and say, "You helped this happen."
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
But the politicians and policies that helped to exacerbate the impact of the hurricane need to be exposed and held accountable. Again, the Administration's focus on pre-emptive wars, militarism and isolationist environmental interests have paid a ghastly dividend.
C. Herrera
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dan Pashman, Senior Producer, Morning Sedition, Air America Radio
"As terrible as it is, this attack could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. The ACLU's got to take a lot of the blame for this…The abortionists have got to bear some of the burden for this because God will not be mocked…I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians…all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen.'"
- Rev. Jerry Falwell, September 13, 2001
Who can forget Jerry Falwell's infamous post-9/11 indictment of America? 'You helped this happen,' Falwell said to the majority of Americans, who disagree with him on a majority of issues.
Now, a conservative group called Columbia Christians for Life has proclaimed that Hurricane Katrina was another one of God's punishments, citing as evidence the supposed resemblance between the hurricane's image on a weather map, and a fetus.
Trying to refute such claims from these zealots is truly an exercise in futility. But searching for explanations after a disaster of Katrina's magnitude is not. And if you do in fact search for those explanations, you'll reach an unavoidable conclusion:
Hurricane Katrina may have been an act of God. But the level of death and destruction it caused was not. That was an act of conservatism.
It is conservative policies that made this natural disaster unnaturally catastrophic. I say to conservatives, you have blood on your hands today. I point the finger in your face and say, "You helped this happen."
Conservative policies have led to an increase in poverty across the nation, especially in New Orleans, one of the poorest major cities in America. About 150,000 people in New Orleans lived below the poverty line before Katrina, 100,000 of them in abject poverty, making less than $8,000 a year. Their poverty left them with nowhere to go, and no means of escape, as the hurricane bore down on their homes.
Conservative policies have led to more global warming, which scientists agree has already begun producing more intense hurricanes and storms. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a former Republican Party Chairman and longtime GOP operative, has seen his own state ravaged by Katrina. But he was vital in helping to convince the Bush administration to squash the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and pushed Bush to go back on his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide. Governor Barbour would dare express grief over the deaths that he himself enabled.
Conservative policies have led to a war in Iraq based on lies, and tax cuts for the rich, both of which, we know for a fact, took money directly away from vital hurricane preparedness work in New Orleans. On nine occasions in 2004 and 2005, The New Orleans Times-Picayune specifically cited the cost of the Iraq War as a reason for the shortfall in hurricane- and flood-control funds. The levees that gave way under Katrina's pressure were supposed to be upgraded with money that ended up in Halliburton’s coffers.
Conservative policies have also led to the National Guard's misuse and abuse, leaving the Gulf Coast without the personnel and equipment vital to a recovery effort of this magnitude. More people will die on the Gulf Coast as they await their would-be saviors, who are in Iraq, victims themselves of conservative policies.
There can be no doubt that while Hurricane Katrina was not preventable, much of the death and destruction left in its wake was. I say to conservatives, you have blood on your hands today. I point the finger in your face and say, "You helped this happen."
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
The Flyover Presidency of George W. Bush
by Arianna Huffington
The president's 35-minute Air Force One flyover of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was the perfect metaphor for his entire presidency: detached, disconnected, and disengaged. Preferring to take in America's suffering -- whether caused by the war in Iraq or Hurricane Katrina -- from a distance. In this case, 2,500 feet.
Apparently, the president "sat somberly on a couch on the left hand side of the presidential jumbo jet peering out the window" at the catastrophe below, joined at different times by White House staffers including Karl Rove and Scott McClellan.
McClellan later quoted the president as saying, "It's devastating. It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." Ya think?? Hey, here's an idea, Mr. President: maybe you should, y'know, get off the plane and see for yourself?
Instead, he jetted on to Washington for a brisk 9-minute Rose Garden speech designed to let us know that his administration was doing everything in its power to mitigate the looming PR disaster the flooding of New Orleans could create for the White House... Uh, I mean, everything in its power to aid the recovery.
The speech contained the usual Bush bonhomie (he's "confident" New Orleans "will be back on its feet, and America will be a stronger place for it"). But the most telling moment came when the president discussed the ways his administration was moving to help ease the suffering of profit-soaked oil companies impacted by the storm, pointing out that he had instructed Energy Secretary Sam Bodman to work with refineries to "alleviate any shortage through loans" and that the EPA had waived clean air standards for gasoline and diesel fuels in all 50 states. You could almost see him getting misty.
He also unleashed a torrent of facts and figures: "The Department of Transportation has provided more than 400 trucks to move 1,000 truckloads containing 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat -- or MREs, 13.4 million liters of water, 10,400 tarps, 3.4 million pounds of ice, 144 generators, 20 containers of pre-positioned disaster supplies, 135,000 blankets and 11,000 cots." It was as if by piling so many disparate numbers so high he might be able to block out the two most significant numbers of all: the number of National Guardsmen unable to help out in Louisiana and Mississippi because they are deployed in Iraq, and the tens of millions of hurricane and flood-control dollars that never made it to Lake Pontchartrain because they had been diverted to Iraq.
The president's Rose Garden speech followed an all-hands-on-deck press briefing earlier in the day featuring Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and as many cabinet members and agency heads could be crammed around a podium, including Bodman of Energy, Mineta of Transportation, Johnson of the EPA, Leavitt of HHS, and McHale of DoD. It had the feel of the old circus bit where clown after clown after clown piles out of the impossibly small car.
And, like the president, Chertoff and company came armed with plenty of designed-to-obfuscate numbers. In one head-spinning riff, Chertoff rattled off info on "39 disaster medical assistance teams," "1,700 trailer trucks," "truckloads of water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents and tarpaulins," as well as the Coast Guard's "three national strike teams" and other "ships, boats and aircraft" that had "worked heroically for the last 48 hours, rescuing and assisting well more than 1,000 people who were in distress." But still no mention of those unavailable Guardsmen or the funds that were taken away from shoring up Lake Pontchartrain and shipped over to Iraq.
Those are the blood red elephants floating belly-up in the middle of this deadly disaster -- and the reason for the full-court PR press.
During his press briefing, Chertoff declared the aftermath of Katrina "an incident of national significance." It's clear from Bush and his team's actions how worried they are that, as the facts come out, it will become "an incident of political significance" as well.
The president's 35-minute Air Force One flyover of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was the perfect metaphor for his entire presidency: detached, disconnected, and disengaged. Preferring to take in America's suffering -- whether caused by the war in Iraq or Hurricane Katrina -- from a distance. In this case, 2,500 feet.
Apparently, the president "sat somberly on a couch on the left hand side of the presidential jumbo jet peering out the window" at the catastrophe below, joined at different times by White House staffers including Karl Rove and Scott McClellan.
McClellan later quoted the president as saying, "It's devastating. It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." Ya think?? Hey, here's an idea, Mr. President: maybe you should, y'know, get off the plane and see for yourself?
Instead, he jetted on to Washington for a brisk 9-minute Rose Garden speech designed to let us know that his administration was doing everything in its power to mitigate the looming PR disaster the flooding of New Orleans could create for the White House... Uh, I mean, everything in its power to aid the recovery.
The speech contained the usual Bush bonhomie (he's "confident" New Orleans "will be back on its feet, and America will be a stronger place for it"). But the most telling moment came when the president discussed the ways his administration was moving to help ease the suffering of profit-soaked oil companies impacted by the storm, pointing out that he had instructed Energy Secretary Sam Bodman to work with refineries to "alleviate any shortage through loans" and that the EPA had waived clean air standards for gasoline and diesel fuels in all 50 states. You could almost see him getting misty.
He also unleashed a torrent of facts and figures: "The Department of Transportation has provided more than 400 trucks to move 1,000 truckloads containing 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat -- or MREs, 13.4 million liters of water, 10,400 tarps, 3.4 million pounds of ice, 144 generators, 20 containers of pre-positioned disaster supplies, 135,000 blankets and 11,000 cots." It was as if by piling so many disparate numbers so high he might be able to block out the two most significant numbers of all: the number of National Guardsmen unable to help out in Louisiana and Mississippi because they are deployed in Iraq, and the tens of millions of hurricane and flood-control dollars that never made it to Lake Pontchartrain because they had been diverted to Iraq.
The president's Rose Garden speech followed an all-hands-on-deck press briefing earlier in the day featuring Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and as many cabinet members and agency heads could be crammed around a podium, including Bodman of Energy, Mineta of Transportation, Johnson of the EPA, Leavitt of HHS, and McHale of DoD. It had the feel of the old circus bit where clown after clown after clown piles out of the impossibly small car.
And, like the president, Chertoff and company came armed with plenty of designed-to-obfuscate numbers. In one head-spinning riff, Chertoff rattled off info on "39 disaster medical assistance teams," "1,700 trailer trucks," "truckloads of water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents and tarpaulins," as well as the Coast Guard's "three national strike teams" and other "ships, boats and aircraft" that had "worked heroically for the last 48 hours, rescuing and assisting well more than 1,000 people who were in distress." But still no mention of those unavailable Guardsmen or the funds that were taken away from shoring up Lake Pontchartrain and shipped over to Iraq.
Those are the blood red elephants floating belly-up in the middle of this deadly disaster -- and the reason for the full-court PR press.
During his press briefing, Chertoff declared the aftermath of Katrina "an incident of national significance." It's clear from Bush and his team's actions how worried they are that, as the facts come out, it will become "an incident of political significance" as well.
The Face Of Disaster
We're looking at the worst natural disaster in American history, but we don't have the troops that we need to help. The National
Guard has been deployed to Iraq where things have gone hideously wrong and continue to get worse to the point where one has to wonder if America is capable of making things better or if it isn't time we look at ourselves as the problem, take a scalpel to the cancer we have become.
Hundreds died this week in the Gulf States. The unique American city of New Orleans drowned beneath the broken levees. Looting broke out. Oil prices spiked. It will be months before residents are able to return. Tens of thousands are homeless. The Guardsmen that are on duty have all already been in Iraq, the other's are still there. Alabama's National Guard is at 78% as recruiting and retention problems have strained the service to the breaking point.
Trace the problems with the Guard to the Middle East. When President Bush joined the National Guard he did it to avoid service in foreign wars, a loophole his administration has effectively closed. Meanwhile, at least 800 Iraqis die after a stampede caused by a rumor of a suicide bomber. Could things be worse?
Think about that again. 800 dead, one incident, a rumor. Eight hundred. About double what many are estimating will be the death toll in the Gulf States. Like everyone else I'm hoping the death toll is at the low end. But one incident in Iraq kills twice as many as the worst natural disaster in the history of our country. The cost of Katrina is estimated at $25 Billion. The cost of the Iraq war is hundreds of billions and growing with nothing to show for it.
We're seeing the radical cost of our man made tragedy played out in our submerged coastline. Our resources, stretched too thin to control looting in our own country. We have to pay for the mistakes of our administration; to deal with a God that does not take our ill-advised wars into account when planning his storms. The hurricane and our war are not related, only our ability to deal with them. So now we have to pray. Pray both for more survivors in Louisianna, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. Pray for food and water and the heroism of the rescue workers already on the scene, searching in boats and planes and helicopters to help the living, to bring relief to that sea of devastation already referred to as "our tsunami" "Hiroshima." And pray also for a speedy end to the conflict we have mishandled in the Middle East since the moment we went in. Pray for our soldiers there, our Guardsmen who are needed back home, and for relief from the unnatural devastation and suffering of the people of Iraq.
Guard has been deployed to Iraq where things have gone hideously wrong and continue to get worse to the point where one has to wonder if America is capable of making things better or if it isn't time we look at ourselves as the problem, take a scalpel to the cancer we have become.
Hundreds died this week in the Gulf States. The unique American city of New Orleans drowned beneath the broken levees. Looting broke out. Oil prices spiked. It will be months before residents are able to return. Tens of thousands are homeless. The Guardsmen that are on duty have all already been in Iraq, the other's are still there. Alabama's National Guard is at 78% as recruiting and retention problems have strained the service to the breaking point.
Trace the problems with the Guard to the Middle East. When President Bush joined the National Guard he did it to avoid service in foreign wars, a loophole his administration has effectively closed. Meanwhile, at least 800 Iraqis die after a stampede caused by a rumor of a suicide bomber. Could things be worse?
Think about that again. 800 dead, one incident, a rumor. Eight hundred. About double what many are estimating will be the death toll in the Gulf States. Like everyone else I'm hoping the death toll is at the low end. But one incident in Iraq kills twice as many as the worst natural disaster in the history of our country. The cost of Katrina is estimated at $25 Billion. The cost of the Iraq war is hundreds of billions and growing with nothing to show for it.
We're seeing the radical cost of our man made tragedy played out in our submerged coastline. Our resources, stretched too thin to control looting in our own country. We have to pay for the mistakes of our administration; to deal with a God that does not take our ill-advised wars into account when planning his storms. The hurricane and our war are not related, only our ability to deal with them. So now we have to pray. Pray both for more survivors in Louisianna, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. Pray for food and water and the heroism of the rescue workers already on the scene, searching in boats and planes and helicopters to help the living, to bring relief to that sea of devastation already referred to as "our tsunami" "Hiroshima." And pray also for a speedy end to the conflict we have mishandled in the Middle East since the moment we went in. Pray for our soldiers there, our Guardsmen who are needed back home, and for relief from the unnatural devastation and suffering of the people of Iraq.
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