AMERICA IN DISTRESS HURRICANES FLOODING WAR & TORTURE

US SOLDIERS KILLED IN EXPLOSION IN IRAQI WAR : THE NEW QUAGMIRE
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LEVEES BREACHED IN NEW ORLEANS AFTER HURRICANE RITA
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IRAQI CIVILIAN INJURED IN WAR
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NEW ORLEANS FRIDAY SEPT.23/05: A NATION IN DISTRESS ???
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USA S.O.S.
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BRINGING HOME THE DEAD FROM IRAQ
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' Ambrose Bierce, in his entry under Patriotism in his Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906), wrote: "In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first." ' Qoute from The USA PATRIOT Act and American Libraries
by Robin Rice.

And so time for another bit of ranting of my own .
Anyway the above quote does seem apt in the case of George W. Bush & his cronies & the Religious Right as they move ahead with their plans for an Authoritarian Theocracy run for the most part by an elite of the most wealthy of American society though some might argue this would not be much of a change since the USA has always operated in this way. Though I would argue that at times America seemed to be on the verge of being a just & fair nation but these times have rarely lasted very long.

On Saturday in Washington there was a large demonstration by those who are against the American War in Iraq. 100,000 people took part in the demonstration. The American media barely mentioned the event though they gave equal time to groups demonstrating today in Washinton who support the war their numbers were less than a thousand. The war is no longer supported by a majority of Americans as the death toll of US troops rise & the violence in Iraq continues on a daily basis & Iraq begins to seem more & more like the Quagmire Vietnam became.

Revelations of more abuse by American soldiers of Prisoners leads to more questions about the morality & justication for the war. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction & no connection between Sadam Hussein & Al Qeda & the United States was no in imminent risk from Sadam Husein & the people of Iraq. The War on Terror has not been won nor is it any nearer to being won . The beatings & torture of suspected terrorist if anything undermines the High Ground which the USA & President Bush had immediately following 9/11. To fight terror with terror leads the world down the road of endless conflict. The abuse of prisoners by American forces in the end only helps Al Qeda & other terrorist groups in their characterization of the United States & other countries in the west as being immoral & as being enemies of Islam . American unfortunately lack any cultural sensitivity towards cultures & religions different from their own. When the Religious Right characterizes Islam as a Religion that preaches war & intolerance they merely fuel the suspicions of many Muslims who already question the aims & ultimate agenda Of George W. Bush & his administration.

As I have discussed in previous posts the History of the United States is not without its own dark side from Slavery to Lynchings to the Jim Crow laws of American Apartheid which lasted in legal terms into the 1970s . McCarthyism & the abuses over the decades by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover & the interference in democratic sovereign nations by the CIA & its dirty wars in countries like Chile , Gautemala , Honduras, El Salvadore & Nicaragua amongst others. The Us has had a History of supporting Brutal Dictators & authoritarian military governments as in the Phillipines, Iran & South Africa & Indonesia & many others. To American Presidents & their administrations whether Republican or Democrat have believed that there is no ethical problem in supporting such brutal regimes which terrorize their own people as long as these foreign governments support American interest. On the one hand they condemn a country like the Soviet Union for its violations of citizens civil rights & yet supports & helps to train or advise death squads operating in countries who are their friends.
The United States has shown in its actions a complete disregard for the Geneva Convention & other treaties on international law & the International Court & the United Nations General Assembly which they merely see as institutions which they use for their own benefit to promote America's goals abroad & the goals of its large interlocking corporations .


And here are some excerpts from the article based on the report of Human Rights Watch on the latest accusations made by US soldiers who served as guards for the POWs or detainees accused of being Terrorists as revealed in the Washinton Post .
New Reports Surface About Detainee Abuse/Mistreatment Was Routine, Soldiers Say
By Josh White/Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Washington post

The residents of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, nicknamed soldiers at the nearby base "the Murderous Maniacs," New York-based Human Rights Watch said. "The soldiers considered this name a badge of honor."

It said soldiers in the elite 82nd Airborne deprived detainees of sleep, food and water, subjected them to extreme heat and cold, stacked prisoners in human pyramids, kicked them in the face, and put chemicals on exposed skin and eyes.

One of the sergeants allegedly told the group that military intelligence personnel, eager for information, often instructed soldiers to "smoke" detainees _ called Persons Under Control or PUCs _ during questioning, the report said. "Smoking" prisoners meant physically abusing them until they lost consciousness.

"Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport," he reportedly said.

"One day (another sergeant) shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini-Louisville Slugger, a metal bat."

The soldier said anything short of death was acceptable.

"As long as no PUCs came up dead, it happened," he said. "We kept it to broken arms and legs."

The timing of some of the alleged tortures coincided with the prisoner abuse by American forces at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad in fall of 2003.

"These soldiers' firsthand accounts provide further evidence contradicting claims that abuse of detainees by U.S. forces was isolated or spontaneous," the report said. "The accounts here suggest that the mistreatment of prisoners by the U.S. military is even more widespread than has been acknowledged to date, including among troops belonging to some of the best trained, most decorated, and highly respected units in the U.S. Army."

The soldiers quoted in the report expressed much confusion about what types of treatment were allowed under the Geneva Conventions, which bar mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilian detainees. They said senior officers provided little guidance.

Human Rights Watch harshly criticized the U.S. military in its report, saying it has launched investigations and prosecutions of lower-ranking personnel for detainee abuse. But in most cases, the military used closed administrative hearings where they handed down light administrative punishments such as pay reductions and reprimands, instead of criminal prosecutions before courts-martial.

"The military has made no effort to conduct a broader criminal investigation focusing on how military command might have been involved in reported abuse, and the administration continues to insist that reported abuse had nothing to do with the administration's decisions on the applicability of the Geneva Conventions or with any approved interrogation techniques," it said.

Some of the photos showed naked prisoners stacked in human pyramids or on dog leashes. The Pentagon has characterized it as acts of bored military police working the overnight shift.

see: http://www.washingtonpost.com
and : http://hrw.org/
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH-DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS WORLWIDE
SEPT. 22-24, 2005

and Human Rights Watch article on prisoners in a jail in New Orleans who were left in locked cells for days without food & water as the flood waters were rising drowning an unknown numder prisoners.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
(New York, September 22, 2005)
New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters
Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked in Cells

Americans Against World Empire, Americans Against Bombing
www.againstbombing.org/

Support of DICTATORS & Terrorists
Politics - USA. Support of DICTATORS & Terrorists. German · Our Links ...
Ronald Reagan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz meet at the White House 11/84 ...
www.betterworldlinks.org

History of US Interventions
US foreign relations · US and International bodies and treaties ... for this site
is slightly different to that of its original site (www.bevin.de/usa). ...
www.cooperativeresearch.org/

AlterNet: Bush's Pat Robertson Problem
American foreign policy almost always supports the Dictator over any people’s party
... RE: USA for Dictators. Screw the people. Posted by: Skipper ...
www.alternet.org/story/24747/

Anyway that's it for now,
GORD

1935 LYNCHING OF Rubin STACY IN FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA : STRANGE FRUIT KKK TERRORIST ALL IN A DAYS WORK !!! THE DARK SIDE OF AMERICA WHEN WILL IT STOP !!! ???
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CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY OR BUSINESS AS USUAL

KKK MARCH ON WASHINGTON 1925
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SCORCHED EARTH POLICY OF THE BRITISH DURING THE BOER WAR- CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
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BOER CHILD IN BRITISH CONCENTRATION CAMP TO STARVE & TERRORIZE BOER REBELS
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BOER CIVILIANS ON THEIR WAY TO BRITISH RUN CONCENTRATION CAMPS -THOUSANDS LEFT TO DIE OF STARVATION _THIRTY YEARS BEFORE THE NAZI RISE TO POWER IN GERMANY
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LYNCHINGS IN AMERICA LEGALIZED EXECUTION - WAS THIS " THE GOOD OLD DAYS " THAT NEO-CONS & THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT WANT TO RETURN TO !!! ???
NOW THE STATE DOES THE LYNCHINGS & CALL IT
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT !!!
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BOER CHILD IN BRITISH CONCENTRATION CAMP TO STARVE & TERRORIZE BOER REBELS 1901
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BOER CIVILIANS ON THEIR WAY TO BRITISH RUN CONCENTRATION CAMPS -THOUSANDS LEFT TO DIE OF STARVATION _THIRTY YEARS BEFORE THE NAZI RISE TO POWER IN GERMANY
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SCORCHED EARTH POLICY OF THE BRITISH DURING THE BOER WAR- CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
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KKK MARCH ON WASHINGTON 1925
HOME GROWN AMERICAN CHRISTIAN TERRORISTS
MURDERING AFRICAN AMERICANS WITH IMPUNITY
THEY STILL HAVE FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES !!!
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1935 LYNCHING OF Rubin STACY IN FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA : STRANGE FRUIT KKK TERRORIST ALL IN A DAYS WORK !!! THE DARK SIDE OF AMERICA WHEN WILL IT STOP !!! ???
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ANYWAY back to some more disturbing topics.

Someone commented that they felt that I was being too harsh in my criticisms of the British Empire in my posts dealing with the Irish Famine & Ireland’s fight for independence & Britain’s use of the Black & Tans as Death Squads sent to terrorize the Irish People & my posts on Britain’s treatment of India during the Sepoy Rebellion & India’s justified struggle for Independence.

Firstly those who still defend the British Empire seem to believe that Britain had the God-given-right to rule over a large part of the world & that those peoples under British rule had no right whatsoever to try to achieve Independence from Britain. This would of course have to include the fight for Independence by all of her colonies including the American colonies .

Secondly some argue that given the alternatives The British Empire was superiour in its dealings with those she had conquered than were the Germans, French, Spanish ,Portuguese, Dutch or even the Japanese. There is scant evidence to show this to be true . Each of these empires committed various Crimes Against Humanity as in taking part in the Slave Trade & their extermination of Aboriginal peoples in the Colonies which they occupied.The apologist of the British Empire seem to merely downplay & make excuses for any wrongs which the British Empire is accused of.

They need to comfort themselves however they can with a vision of the British Empire which was drummed into them by means of Propaganda in the Public or Private school system & what their parents & other elders told them & what the propaganda literature of the British 19th century of Kipling et al presented them telling the British people that those ruled by Britain were like children who needed their guidance that someone like Mahatma Ghandi though he attended Oxford & became a lawyer, in their view, he was not capable of making adult type decisions concerning his own rights & the rights of the people of India.

Otherwise these apologists for the British Empire would have to face the facts & realize that for generations the British held a racist view of the world & had little regard for the lives of the masses of those they conquered & oppressed & that many of those personalities they hold up as heroes were in fact self-serving ethnocentric mass murderers & butchers or at the very least stood by keeping silent while atrocities were committed in their name from the likes of General Gordon to Kitchener & Winston Churchill.

Niall Ferguson in his book on the British Empire details the atrocities committed by the British in her colonies showing how brutal the British could be to those whom they saw as being a little less than human whether the Irish & Scots or the people of India , China or Japan or African states or the BOERS or the peoples of Arabia & the Middle East. Then Niall Ferguson at the end of his book sets out to prove that the British Empire wasn’t so bad after all & so becomes an apologist for the massacres murders executions & torturing done in the name of GOD & KING & CIVILIZATION.

Niall Ferguson argues that the countries under British Rule were better off than they would have been under the rule of Nazi Germany or the Japanese but he tends to confuse the Germans under the NAZIS with the Government of Germany in the pre-Nazi era from the 19th century to 1933 which would be the more correct & apt comparison. The British committed as many or possibly more atrocities in their colonies as did other Colonial Powers.

It only goes to show how deep racism runs in the veins of even those who are intelligent well educated scholars who believe they are being objective when in fact they are grasping at straws to fit with their rosy & misguided view of history & humanity. One wonders why Niall Ferguson would go to such lengths to defend the indefensible. History teaches us over & over again that humanity acts in the most atrocious manner in dealing with other members of humanity.

Niall Ferguson’s position is like that of Americans today who prefer a sanitized version of their own history to cover up atrocities committed by the American Military in foreign lands or by the military or its police forces or by groups of American civilians such as the KKK & other White Supremacist groups against their fellow Americans especially against those of the various minorities for example the more than 3,500 lynchings carried out from the end of the Civil War to the present & for instance the Massacre in 1923 at ROSEWOOD Florida 1923 & the Tulsa Race Riots 1921 which are also part of the darker side of American society.

A nation can not heal such rifts between the various members of its society until it can face its own historical reality & accept blame for past actions & vow that its society will not be party to such crimes by means of silence & indifference & will in the future insist that Justice be done.

The historical record of The British Empire speaks for itself as an empire fueled by racism & that its officials, politicians & bureaucrats & its military forces committed acts which can be characterized as being racist, brutal & barbaric & that these atrocities were “ CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY “. The fact that other countries or Colonial Powers committed similar acts does not justify these acts nor does it lessen the immorality & brutality of these acts.
To claim that Nazi Germany committed far greater crimes does not in anyway lessen the seriousness of the crimes committed by the British Empire or those committed by any other nation. One could argue that the killing machine of the Nazis was just more efficient than that of the British Empire or of any other Colonial Power.
One could enumerate such Crimes Against Humanity like the Slave Trade as conducted by European Powers & the United States over a period of at least three centuries or so.
Or for instance the murder of tens of thousands of Jews long before Hitler or Stalin came to power or the massacre of millions of Native Peoples in North America & South America as well as in Australia & New Zealand etc.

Here are some books & websites for more on atrocities of the British Empire:
also see Niall Ferguson EMPIRE: THE RISE & DEMISE OF THE BRITISH WORLD ORDER & THE LESSONS FOR GLOBAL POWER pub. 2002
Penguin Books LTD., LONDON
AND:
The Chinese Opium Wars /, Beeching, Jack.
The Great Mutiny : India 1857 /, Hibbert, Christopher
The Lion's Share : a short history of British imperialism, 1850-1970 /, Porter, Bernard.

Concentration Camps during the South African / Boer War,
1899-1902
Compiled by John Rawlings, rawlings@stanford.edu
Stanford University: SULAIR
www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/boers.html
Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902
Also known as the South African War, the Anglo-Boer War was fought between the republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal against the British.
africanhistory.about.com/od/angloboerwar/

Crimes Of War Project > The Book
by ED VULLIAMY
www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/concentration-camps.html

Boer Camp Concentration War
Boer hands; they pack off Boer women and children to concentration camps as ...
The "hysterical" Emily Hobhouse and Boer war concentration camp controversy. ...
www.royal-signals.org.uk/7/boer-camp-concentration-war.html

And from THE INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW/JOURNAL
THE BOER WAR REMEMBERED by Mark Weber
www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n3p14_Weber.html
“The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 was more than the first major military clash of the 20th century. Pitting as it did the might of the globe-girdling British Empire, backed by international finance, against a small pioneering nation of independent-minded farmers, ranchers and merchants in southern Africa who lived by the Bible and the rifle, its legacy continues to resonate today. The Boers' recourse to irregular warfare, and Britain's response in herding a hundred thousand women and children into concentration camps foreshadow the horrors of guerilla warfare and mass detention of innocents that have become emblematic of the 20th century.”


SEPOY MUTINY
at IMPERIALISM in INDIA
created by Daniel Lincoln and Jacob Lewis for the ASMS World Studies
Web-Page Collection
SEPOY REBELLION 1857-1859

SEPOY MUTINY
at ALEX CHIRNSIDE’S MILITARY HISTORY HOMEPAGE
THE EPIC OF THE RACE: INDIA 1857
www.geocities.com

AND ON THE SLAVE TRADE & RACISM &ATROCITIES & LYNCHINGS IN AMERICA SEE:

see website THE BLACK HOLOCAUST SOCIETY
AS THE AUTHOR PUTS IT:
This Website is dedicated to the Black men, women and children who were victims of a murderous mob of white civilians, KKK, local police and national guardsmen. Killed for no apparent reason except they had a separate and prosperous community, and dared to dream.....”

Also see The Maafa: A Holocaust of Greed/Slavery
at Geocities by Kam Maafa

“The term Maafa is kiswahili for "disaster" or "terrible occurrence, and thus the name now given to the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.”


and : 'I'm sorry' just isn't enough
www.dailybruin.ucla.edu
as Victor Patton puts it in his website:
“ a vast majority of whites, liberals included, refuse to admit that they are the direct benefactors of slavery and oppression. And why should they feel bad for slavery? After all, if it wasn't for slavery and the systematic wiping out of indigenous peoples all over the world, white folks wouldn't be on top right now, so why apologize? ”

also see Africans in America
www.pbs.org
For Example:
“ [W]hat northerners were saying now is they didn't want slavery to be part of the future in the West, because slavery would threaten their values, their sense of a work ethic. They were especially concerned that wherever slavery went it tended to degrade the meaning of labor. It tended to degrade the meaning of liberty itself.... Was a civil war inevitable over slavery in America? No. A war was not necessarily inevitable over slavery in America, but a deep conflict over slavery was. Any nation ... that founds itself on the creeds of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right of revolution, the doctrine of consent and the doctrine of equality, and yet develops one of the largest systems of human bondage in the world, is living a national life of contradiction.”
- David Blight, historian

BYE FOR NOW,
GORD.

GEORGE BUSH & HIS ADMINISTRATION'S USE & ABUSE OF THE MEDIA TO PROMOTE THIER VIEW OF REALITY

TWEEDLE DE & TWEEDLE DUM IN CHARGE OF STIFFLING THE MEDIA & SMILING & JOKING IN THE FACE OF DISASTER & INCOMPETENCE
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FLOOD VICTIM NEW ORLEANS WHAT BUSH DOES NOT WANT THE WORLD TO SEE - HIDE THE BODIES SO EVERYONE WILL FORGET ACCORDING TO " THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH OF AMERICA "
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Anyway here are a couple of articles & links to other articles & BLOGS pertinent to the Bush administrations policies & attitudes especially in regards to its slow & inept response to Hurricane Katrina.


LATIMES.com
Bush's Hurricane Response a Disaster
September 5,2005
Nearly five years ago, the Bush administration rode into office bearing its cynicism about government high, like a banner.

It promoted a massive tax cut as a way of "starving the beast" of federal government. President Bush traveled the country telling us that we were overdependent on the government for help with healthcare and retirement. To those wondering what resources might see them into old age, he advised: "a conservative mix of stocks and bonds."

New Orleans is, or should be, the graveyard of the conservative ideology that government is useless. An American city is reduced to Third World desperation as people who own nothing scrounge for necessities in a sea of waste and federal officials offer lame excuses about how their disaster plans would have worked fine had there not been, you know, a disaster. The president, at the head of a global power that can't get its own troops or supplies off their bases to reach the needful, whines, "The private sector needs to do its part."

AND FURTHER REGARDING THE USE & ABUSE OF THE MEDIA FOR PROPAGANDA PURPOSES:

See Frank Rich’s (who does op-ed pieces for the New York Times ) speech on Tuesday sept. 6, 2005 at Oberlin Convocation series of speeches
also see other articles by Frank Rich on BUSH & THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT & THE CREATION OF A THEOCRACY IN AMERICA
as reported in THE OBERLIN REVIEW SEPTEMBER 9, 2005 by Emma Dumain
as she says:

“ In his(Frank Rich’s) eyes, America is a divided country not exclusively between “red and blue, but between fiction and reality.”

And further:

Rich stated that “the brilliance of the Bush administration is that it has figured out what’s going on [and how] to exploit it, [that this is a] 24/7 media web we live in.”

The news media has stopped asking the “hard questions” altogether in favor of a story that can be easily “packaged.” President George W. Bush did not have to work hard to tell the fictions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or that Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11th attacks and in league with Osama bin Laden.

News channels also did not ask questions when the administration arranged for a “sanitized” view of the war. Rich used the bombing blitz on Iraq during the first stages of the U.S. invasion as an example. “ ‘Shock and awe’ was a marketing term,” he said. “But, to this day, we still don’t know what was going on or how many Iraqis were killed.”

“ ‘America’s new war,’ kind of like ‘America’s new Coke,’ ” Rich mused bitterly.

Rich offered even further examples of the Bush administration’s narrative-conscious policies: a 48-hour ultimatum for Hussein which lent itself inevitably well to a “countdown clock” graphic; the staged “mission accomplished” speech aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln; and the deliberate romanticizing of football hero Pat Tillman’s death in combat so that it could be more compelling on the evening news.

“This is a news culture where everything is up for grabs,” he said. “Jon Stewart’s slogan [on The Daily Show], ‘the most trusted name in fake news,’ actually means something!”

He acknowledged the faults of even the most respected news sources such as The New York Times and The Washington Post for reporting the fictions put forth by the Bush administration, and said in a softer, sadder tone about the disaster in New Orleans, “We’ve realized in four years that the number one goal of the government is protecting homeland security, and now we know that that was a sham. ”

www.oberlin.edu

Ah well so there you go.
But even if all of this is true it probably won’t matter to the BUSHITES who are true believers in an ideology which has no real place for compassion except for simple organisms like a human fertilized egg or some poor soul in a vegitative state with no chance of recovery completely dependent on machines.

AND for more:
September 8, 2005
latimes.com : National News

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
Navy Pilots Are 'Counseled'/reprimanded & demoted After Unauthorized Rescues in New Orleans # During supply mission, they helicoptered 110 survivors to safety.

And more & more etc.

John Kass
Changing words, pictures won't change reality
Published September 8, 2005
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion
Chicago Tribune

Who do we blame? Frankly, it's obvious
Molly Ivins, Creators syndicate
Published September 8, 2005
/www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion

Chicago Tribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/
GULF COAST CRISIS: GUN PURCHASES
Fearful Southerners buy firearms at torrid pace

ALSO SEE regarding Barbara Bush’s remarks
CBSNEWS.com
The Roots of Bush's ' Compassion'
/www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/06/opinion

And further:
See website by Daniel Kurtzman
Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina - Stupidest Hurricane ...
20 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath ...
–Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the ...
politicalhumor.about.com/od/currentevents/a/katrinaquotes
also see various archival bits on Bush for instance:
The 50 Dumbest Things President Bush Said in His First Term etc.


Chicago Tribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion
Sick minds use Katrina to justify hatred
By Leonard Pitts
Published September 6, 2005

By Stephen J. Hedges
CHICAGO Tribune national correspondent
Published September 4, 2005
Navy ship USS BATAAN nearby underused
Craft with food, water, doctors needed orders
The role in the relief effort of the sizable medical staff on board the Bataan was not up to the Navy, but to FEMA officials directing the overall effort.

SEE YOU LATER,
GORD.

GEORGIE & THE BUSHITES & THE CLASS WAR OR RACISM OR MERELY HEARTLESS BEAN-COUNTERS

THE IRONY OF IT ALL "Jazz Funeral For Democracy, A Wake For Peace": War protestors mourn in New Orleans 2005.02.11
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So anyway here is a little poem By William ( BILL ) Blake from the Songs of Innocence:

The Divine Image

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is God our Father dear;
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is man, His child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew.
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE: MY RANT FOR THE DAY

The authorities in the US are insisting reporters not take pictures of bodies to save people of America the pain of seeing such things or is it to protect them from the reality of how terrible this disaster has been . This is a real problem for George W. Bush & his inept & heartless administration which is more concerned with the bottom line & public relations to worry too much about a few thousand needless deaths. To these people this disaster is just part of the natural world which is a brutal world red in tooth & claw as John Hobbes I believe said.
Part of the issue here for the Bushites is that maybe by seeing too many bodies on the net or tv some people who like George Bush who are oblivious to the horror of the aftermath & what was not done in preparation for the inevitable maybe then they might feel something but we can't expect any real feeling from the rich & powerful who live in their little protected world or from others on the Right who are True Believers who insist on clinging to their policies even when the reality slaps them in the face showing that these policies are not working. These policies which many believe as I do that they have had disastrous & deadly consequences.

Meanwhile people like Pat Buchanan see the disaster as proof that the poor people in the three states affected are too dependent on government whether at the state or federal level. This he believes is the reason why many of them did not evacuate when they should have & now they are looking hand-outs from the Federal Government like free food & water & temporary shelter what a bunch of con artists eh so Pat would have us believe. This is what he said or implied on The MCLAUGHLIN group on PBS on Friday night .
Pat Buchanan like Barbara Bush & Laura Bush still can not understand why these people- the left behinds didn’t just call a cab or limo or purchase a ticket on an airline. They can not relate to anyone who makes less than a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year let alone some family who’s total income is less than 20,000 or even 10,ooo a year.

It was apparent that Pat Buchanan ‘s sympathy for the people most affected was completely absent as he could sit feeling gleeful that policies like the Great Society of Pres. Johnson of the 1960s were in large part responsible for the extent of the disaster in his view.

He refused to accept that part of the responsibility for the extent of the disaster was a result of decades of neglect for the area by the Federal Government for example reinforcing levees etc. & that no realistic plans for the evacuation of the inhabitants especially those without the means to leave the area had been developed over the years.
Pat Buchanan believes in fact that the Federal Government is doing far more than it should in such natural disasters.

The cut backs on such projects goes back to the Reagan administration & continued under the regimes of Presidents Bush jr. & senior as they went ahead with policies to reduce taxes for the rich & the belief that the Federal Government's role should be limited in times of disaster-
They also believe the Federal Government has little or no role in insuring that the infrastructure of highways , hospitals & schools etc. are kept up to par &that the reality is that the poorest states need the help of the Federal Government to help take care of these basic needs if the poorest states cannot afford to.

The question then arises about the role & purpose of a Federal Government besides that of fighting foreign enemies .
Since Bush & his supporters are in favour of deregulation & that Big Business should be allowed to operate without any regulations or safe-guards or how much they pay employees.

Pres. Bush & Pat Buchanan & Tony Blankley & all their rich friends & Neo-Cons & the Religious Right seem to care so little for the poor in their country & especially those who are poor & black .

To those outside America this most recent natural disaster reveals the heartlessness of their ideology & dogma which rarely includes in their economic equations the human element except in how it relates to the rich & powerful who they see as better & therefore more worthy of any consideration in contrast to the poorest of the poor who are left to fend for themselves. These Conservatives see even the elderly the disabled & children as merely disposable as they adhere to their belief in self-reliance & rugged Individualism & their belief in Social Darwinism of the 19th century which they believe to have been the Golden Age of America.

To the Neo-Cons & religious Right a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina shows the Will of God & is a way of getting rid of the weakest members in American society so that only the strong should be permitted by God & President Bush to survive. There is no purpose in their view to act contrary to the wishes & will of their old-fashioned God of Fire & Brimstone & of anger who looms large in parts of the Old Testament of the Bible.

These Neo-Cons would probably feel more at home in a country run by a dictator or an Oligarchy of the wealthy supported by a fascistic Military like those in some Latin American countries their heroes include rulers like Pinochet of Chile or The Marcos of the Phillipines before they were ousted by the unruly mob of the unwashed supported by more Communist subversives like the ones who brought down the South African Apartheid regime which a few years back they were constantly defending especially by people like Senator Jesse Helms .

These Neo-Cons & Bushites have no time for all this sentimental nonsense about the suffering of the poor whether adults or children & disabled & elderly whom they see as merely lazy & shiftless out to fleece the tax payers of America.

Is this their way or God's way of punishing the poor & blacks is it their pay back for the Civil Rights movement & Martin Luther King Jr. & LBJ & The Great Society & civil rights legislation & losing a war that America they believed could have won but the liberals & protestors robbed them of that victory.
These are also the people for whom the defeat of Barry Goldwater in the presidential campaign of 1964 they can never forgive the left-wing liberals for.
To them President Johnson stole the election with the help of the Civil Rights Movement & the American Civil Liberties Union & the Eastern elite whom they see as having been backed by Communist Subversives.
Does it go back to that in their view that most evil of times when, FDR( Fraklin Delano Roosevelt) used massive amounts of dollars to rebuild the country in the 1930's.

The other thing one might wonder is what the Bush Administration's real motives are regarding the issue of Journalists taking pictures of bodies combined with some alarming reports of Journalists not being allowed to cover the story of the disaster as freely as they had done for the last two weeks.
Is it as they claim a matter of showing respect for the dead or just a way of keeping everyone in the dark about how many people have died as the result of the Hurricane & its aftermath.

Is the Bush administration going to be honest about how many have actually died or will they just refuse to give out numbers of the dead as they have done & continue to do in regards to Iraqi civilians who have died which they refer to as collateral damage. A nice euphemism for innocent Iraqis shot or blown to pieces by so-called American FRIENDLY-FIRE.

Though of course to most Neo-Cons & the American Religious Right Iraqi civilians don't really matter as they are not Christians & are not white but are of inferior ethnic origins like the Kurds & Arabs.

Ah well as we know according to Bush & his fanatic followers only Christians & Capitalist matter in the eyes of their Wrathful & Jealous GOD.


The situation is like the Embedded reporters in Iraq who agreed to cover the war only in ways which are approved of by the Bush Administration & the Pentagon & Big Corporations like Haliburton who are the real power behind the throne as it were .

So as a Canadian I wonder if this is the sort of inept & heartless government that Stephen Harper & his followers hope to bring to our country as official policy that whatever happens everyone is just left to fend for themselves.
Especially as he takes power to help his rich friends & religious bigots whom he is always defending.

It seems that one of main rationales for a strong centralized government is to protect those who are least able to defend themselves.

See for instance:
Frank Rich’s who does op-ed pieces for the New York Times speech on Tuesday sept. 6, 2005 at Oberlin Convocation series of speeches
as reported in THE OBERLIN REVIEW SEPTEMBER 9, 2005 by Emma Dumain
www.oberlin.edu

And from Los Angeles Times Saturday September 10, 2005
Govt. Backs Off from Media Ban
By Matea Gold and Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writers

The federal government said today it would allow the news media to have access to recovery operations in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, a day after the top military official overseeing the federal relief efforts had announced that reporters would not be allowed to watch the recovery of dead bodies...
www.latimes.com

Anyway see you later,
GORD.

BUSH'S DISCONNECT FROM THE DESPARATION OF ORDINARY PEOPLE IN NEW ORLEANS & LATIMES " FEMA MIA "

JESUS IN NEW ORLEANS LATIMES.co Posted by Picasa

THE LEFT BEHIND Posted by Picasa

SIGN OF THE TIMES Posted by Picasa

DESPARATE IN NEW ORLEANS /LATIMES.co Posted by Picasa

NEW ORLEANS LATIMES.co Posted by Picasa

Laura Bush says " WHY DIDN"T THEY JUST CALL A CAB ! "
as if she thought like Marie Antoinnete -

So anyway here’s another rant for you. It can’t be helped the news from New Orleans & the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is all over the TV & the Internet.

There are lots of informative articles to be found in News Agencies all over the world . I’m surprised by the depth of the coverage.
For instance one can readily access info on the various studies done over the years on the poor state in which the levees were left & that there had been demands for large sums of money to be spent to upgrade them & to coordinate Emergency Services in case of the event of a disaster as befell Mississippi, Alabama & Louisiana & that there were discussions which took place concerning what would be done to insure that the poor & disabled were evacuated in such dire circumstances.
So to say no one could have predicted this event in fact they had & had put pressure on the US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT for year to do something but the Neo-Conservatives refused to listen having their own agenda of ridding the country of Big Government & giving substantial tax breaks to the wealthy & insisting on the naive principle that disaster relief should be handled by Private Charities which do not have anywhere near the resources need in such a massive undertaking.

It is surprising that there are so many articles in American & foreign newspapers which are critical of the Bush Administrations slow & inadequate response to the Katrina Hurricane disaster. I take no delight as it were in watching people perish needlessly in the affected areas while Bush gives one upbeat news conference after another. He appears somewhat out of his element & seems to spend a lot of time thanking people for the great job they were or are doing when in fact very little was actually being accomplished on the ground. But this is part of what Bush is all about appearances & putting a good face on a situation which he may have completely botched or doesn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation.
Bush seemed to forget he is the one in control & that the buck stops at his office & he has various discretionary powers at his disposal especially since he is also the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces. These are not powers which individual state governors have or the mayors of the various cities & towns affected by this disaster.
Many are still asking why more troops & equipment along with food water & medical supplies were not sent immediately. All the President had to do was pick up the phone & demand action & if these orders were not carried out in a timely fashion he then could lean on those who were not acting fast enough or even let a few heads role & appoint new people to those positions . Yet President Bush seemed to think it was not up to him but to someone else & they would take up the slack for him.
Is it possible that he has surrounded himself with ideologically like minded people but who may not be up to the positions of trust & authority he has given them.
One wonders what in the world he was thinking .
He may have believed that he could slide through this horrifying event on his smile & charming ways & a few more folksy anecdotes about his drunken days in New Orleans.
Maybe as an Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist he believed that the whole situation was in the hands of GOD.
Maybe he thought the power of positive thinking combined with prayer would somehow feed the hungry & provide water for those who were dying dehydration.
One can only hope that the pressure which has been brought to bare on him from the American & foreign press & by those people who were most affected who managed to survive will continue.
Though the American voters seem to have a limited attention span & will be more worried about Monday Night Football & the World SERIES & what to do for Thanksgiving & Christmas & what presents to buy than to worry their heads over a few thousand dead mostly poor African Americans.
It seems race & class relations in the USA are no better than they were when Martin Luther King forty years ago marched on Washington pleading for equality for African Americans & for the poor of America.


AND here is an article from the LA TIMES which tries to answer what went wrong this time? I think it is pertinent enough to pass on .

LOS ANGELES TIMES
NATIONAL NEWS
www.latimes.com/ sept.06

Why FEMA Was Missing in Action
# Most of the agency's preparedness budget and focus are related to terrorism, not disasters.

By Peter G. Gosselin and Alan C. Miller, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — While the federal government has spent much of the last quarter-century trimming the safety nets it provides Americans, it has dramatically expanded its promise of protection in one area — disaster.

Since the 1970s, Washington has emerged as the insurer of last resort against floods, fires, earthquakes and — after 2001 — terrorist attacks.


But the government's stumbling response to the storm that devastated the nation's Gulf Coast reveals that the federal agency singularly most responsible for making good on Washington's expanded promise has been hobbled by cutbacks and a bureaucratic downgrading.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency once speedily delivered food, water, shelter and medical care to disaster areas, and paid to quickly rebuild damaged roads and schools and get businesses and people back on their feet. Like a commercial insurance firm setting safety standards to prevent future problems, it also underwrote efforts to get cities and states to reduce risks ahead of time and plan for what they would do if calamity struck.

But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, FEMA lost its Cabinet-level status as it was folded into the giant new Department of Homeland Security. And in recent years it has suffered budget cuts, the elimination or reduction of key programs and an exodus of experienced staffers.

The agency's core budget, which includes disaster preparedness and mitigation, has been cut each year since it was absorbed by the Homeland Security Department in 2003. Depending on what the final numbers end up being for next fiscal year, the cuts will have been between about 2% and 18%.

The agency's staff has been reduced by 500 positions to 4,735. Among the results, FEMA has had to cut one of its three emergency management teams, which are charged with overseeing relief efforts in a disaster. Where it once had "red," "white" and "blue" teams, it now has only red and white.

Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in local preparedness and first-responder grants go to terrorism-related activities, even though a recent Government Accountability Office report quotes local officials as saying what they really need is money to prepare for natural disasters and accidents.

"They've taken emergency management away from the emergency managers," complained Morrie Goodman, who was FEMA's chief spokesman during the Clinton administration. "These operations are being run by people who are amateurs at what they are doing."

Richard W. Krimm, a former senior FEMA official for several administrations, agreed. "It was a terrible mistake to take disaster response and recovery … and disaster preparedness and mitigation, and put them in Homeland Security," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged in interviews Sunday that Washington was insufficiently prepared for the hurricane that laid waste to New Orleans and surrounding areas. But he defended its performance by arguing that the size of the storm was beyond anything his department could have anticipated and that primary responsibility for handling emergencies rested with state and local, not federal, officials.

"Before this happened, I said … we need to build a preparedness capacity going forward," Chertoff told NBC's "Meet the Press." He added that that was something "we have not yet succeeded in doing."

Under the law, Chertoff said, state and local officials must direct initial emergency operations. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials," he said.

Chertoff's remarks, which echoed earlier statements by President Bush, prompted withering rebukes both from former senior FEMA staffers and outside experts.

"They can't do that," former agency chief of staff Jane Bullock said of Bush administration efforts to shift responsibility away from Washington. "The moment the president declared a federal disaster, it became a federal responsibility…. The federal government took ownership over the response," she said. Bush declared a disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi when the storm hit a week ago.

"What's awe-inspiring here is how many federal officials didn't issue any orders," said Paul C. Light, an authority on government operations at New York University.

Evidence of confusion extended beyond FEMA and the Homeland Security Department on Sunday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that conditions in New Orleans and elsewhere could quickly escalate into a major public health crisis. But asked whether his agency had dispatched teams in advance of the storm and flooding, Leavitt answered, "No."

"None of these teams were pre-positioned," he told CNN's "Late Edition." "We're having to organize them … as we go."

Such an ad hoc approach might not have surprised Americans until recent decades because the federal government was thought to have few responsibilities for disaster relief, and what duties it did have were mostly delegated to the American Red Cross.

Anyway that’s all for now,
GORD.

HURRICANE KATRINA WORST AMERICAN NATURAL DISASTER TURNED INTO NIGHTMARE BY INEPT BUSH ADMINISTRATION & OPEN LETTER FROM TIMES-PICAYUNE TO BUSH

President George Bush and first lady Laura Bush arrive at a V-J anniversary ceremony at the Naval Air Station in San Diego Tuesday august 31,2005
no hurricane is going to spoil his summer or the Labour Day Weekend !!!

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NEW ORLEANS AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA
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KATRINA DISASTER
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WOODCUT DANSE MACABRE
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“ PITY WOULD BE NO MORE IF THERE WERE NO POOR “
Poet William Blake

The pictures we have seen over the last week of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi & Alabama are appalling & disturbing. As the days passed it became more & more unbelievable & took on a surreal aspect as things went from bad to worse as it seemed very little help was forthcoming for the victims of the disaster. As many others have observed the scenes were more like what one would see in some poor underdeveloped nation but this was not some poor nation but rather this was taking place in the United States of America , the richest & most powerful nation in the world.. Yet those in charge seemed unable to organize a more timely & effective prompt response to the disaster. They seemed able to organize enough press conferences about the matter.
The rest of the world seemed shocked by the lack of response by the American Federal Administration & President George Bush. Is George Bush just uncaring or just out of touch with reality. He seemed to think that giving some reassuring speech to the nation was an adequate response to a natural disaster of such a magnitude that it was beyond his limited imagination or his limited intellectual capacity to truly understand .
Anyway you would think that after 9/11 & the creation of Homeland Security & other measures that the federal administration would have been able to coordinate an appropriate response to such a natural disaster & to bring together all the various government departments at the Federal ,state & municipal levels along with the Us coast guard the national guard & the armed forces etc. but this did not happen in as quickly & effective fashion as one would expect given the United States resources.

In the end the poor & sick & elderly were left behind & the majority of them are African American so class played a large role in the this disaster. From the beginning til six days later the officials failed the poorest sectors of New Orleans’ citizenry .
One of the main concerns of any government is to ensure that those least able , the poor , the sick & the elderly are protected from harm as much as is humanly possible.
Of course in this era of Neo-Conservatism the poor are of little interest to the rest of society .
The poor have become invisible or are attacked for creating their own situation .
The comfortable Middle Class & the rich of the USA don’t want to even think about the plight of the poor in their country & it is considered bad manners to even mention the poor at the Dinner Table let alone that they consider that they help to keep the poor in poverty by protesting against any measures which would help the poor especially if it means a large investment of money by the Government over a long period of time to better the conditions for the poor especially if this might mean higher taxes.
The attitude of the better off classes in society is to give a few cans of soup to a food-bank a couple of times a year & this is as far as their charity extends because it is ingrained in them all their lives that it is a matter of social Darwinism that some are rich & others poor it is a matter of natural selection & as for many Conservative Christians it is all a matter of GOD’s Will who is to be poor & who is to be rich. Were all those who suffered the most & those who perished were they somehow less worthy & less Christian than who suffered less & those who survived is this the way the present Bush Administration operates according to Social Darwinism or a form of Christian Conservatism based on parts of the Old Testament which they pick & chose to fit their Nineteenth Century View of Capitalism & Free Enterprise.

Anyway I’m sure this too shall pass as George Bush & Laura Bush crack wise & smile for the cameras with their upbeat messages of one liner Newsbites & all will be fine in God’s country since it (the USA) is destined to lead the way for the whole world into the Golden Age of Free Enterprise & the Level Playing field where God rewards the pure of heart ( as defined by Bush & Pat Robertson& Jerry Falwell etc. who have a direct line to God so they tell us) punishes all those non-believers who do not pray enough or do not pray in the right way or to the right God or who preach tolerance ,acceptance & even love rather than hate , suspicion & winners take all attitude & screw everybody else.

Anyhow rather than go on with any further criticism or speculation on my part I thought I would re-print the open letter to President Bush from the New Orleans newspaper The Times -Picayune in its entirety :

New Orleans Times -Picayune sept. 4,2005

Editorial: Not acceptable
An open letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right." Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.


So there you go,
GORD.