So what's a few hundred thousand dead Iranians in the scheme of things. When what matters is public relations for the Bush Regime and more money for private contractors to provide food and water for the troops . Besides there is a lot of money to be made by mercenaries such as Blackwater to protect clueless diplomats and bureaucrats and squadrons of accountants and lawyers who are promised a juicy piece of the pie.
But we need to be reminded how inept Bush and his cronies actually are. They managed to make every mistake possible when it came to their unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq. But they also proved that they could even botch a domestic natural disaster. Most Americans and a large portion of people around the world by watching CNN and other TV networks were more in the know about what was taking place in New Orleans than were President Bush and his friends.
And when they did get involved they were more worried about law and order considerations than with rescue operations and getting food and water and medical supplies to those in need . Well actually what at that moment they saw was another opportunity to further test their ideas on privatization of Wars and natural disasters. So they saw opportunities for enriching various private corporations such as Cheney's Halliburton and KBR and mercenaries such as Blackwater. They wished to take capitalism to its next level.
President George Bush after hurricane Katrina September 2005
Tonight so many victims of the hurricane and the flood are far from home and friends and familiar things. You need to know that our whole nation cares about you, and in the journey ahead you're not alone. To all who carry a burden of loss, I extend the deepest sympathy of our country. To every person who has served and sacrificed in this emergency, I offer the gratitude of our country. And tonight I also offer this pledge of the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives. And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again.
The work of rescue is largely finished; the work of recovery is moving forward. In nearly all of Mississippi, electric power has been restored. Trade is starting to return to the Port of New Orleans, and agricultural shipments are moving down the Mississippi River. All major gasoline pipelines are now in operation, preventing the supply disruptions that many feared. The breaks in the levees have been closed, the pumps are running, and the water here in New Orleans is receding by the hour. Environmental officials are on the ground, taking water samples, identifying and dealing with hazardous debris, and working to get drinking water and waste water treatment systems operating again. And some very sad duties are being carried out by professionals who gather the dead, treat them with respect, and prepare them for their rest.
In the task of recovery and rebuilding, some of the hardest work is still ahead, and it will require the creative skill and generosity of a united country.
and ends with :
I know that when you sit on the steps of a porch where a home once stood, or sleep on a cot in a crowded shelter, it is hard to imagine a bright future. But that future will come. The streets of Biloxi and Gulfport will again be filled with lovely homes and the sound of children playing. The churches of Alabama will have their broken steeples mended and their congregations whole. And here in New Orleans, the street cars will once again rumble down St. Charles, and the passionate soul of a great city will return.And yet it is almost three years later and much of the reconstruction has not taken place. Thousands are either homeless or placed in inadequate temporary homes such as the FEMA trailers far from their pre-Katrina homes, parishes and neighborhoods.
From President Bush Discusses Hurricane Relief in Address to the Nation/Jackson Square/New Orleans, Louisiana September 15, 2005 On Hurricane Katrina
As Thomas Oliphant argues in his book Utter Incompetents ( 2007 ) in his chaper on Hurricane Katrina:
The Bush administration is unusual in many, many respects, but nowhere more so than in its trademark combination of arrogance and ineptitude. The truth is that no one had learned anything of consequence from Hurricane Andrew, no one in authority had followed any of the clear signals of approaching catastrophe in the form of Katrina, and the response to the storm's aftermath had all the trappings of post-invasion Iraq. It was not one huge screw-up: that might have made it easier to fix.
Instead,this was a whole series of screw ups beginning well before and continuing well after the hurricane hit. It marked the reappearance of the familiar deadly Bush sins of ineptitude, inattentiveness,hubris, croynism, public relations spin, ideological rigidity, old-fashioned stubborness, and know-it-all-ism at a highest profile moment when the country is looking for results. Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration's response to Katrina resembles panic as much as a monumental failure.
( p. 159 )
It was the disastrous response to the hurricane that drove Bush's approval numbers into the 30s for the first time. It was Katrina that first introduced concepts like embarrassment and shame to the discussion of his tenure, symbolized perhaps by the offers of people and money that came from other countries in the midst of the administration's paralysis. And it was in the aftermath of Katrina that the adjective " incompetent " began to be used on a large scale in analyses of Bush's ineffectual governance. Before Katrina. Bush was in serious trouble: after Katrina, his administration in tatters.(p. 160 )
Similarly, the assertion that the Gulf Coast disaster, epitomized by the flooding of New Orleans and parishes(counties ) to the south and east , was something no one could have forseen is contradicted by the wealth of information that once again a great many people had indeed forseen it. The 9/11 formulation worked politically for a while; in the case of Hurricane Katrina it failed from the beginning and was soon abandoned as a politically viable excuse. p. 167
New Orleans The Bush Legacy
from The Real News
Bush There is a flow of progress
( Thousand in Gulf Coast area in 2008 still waiting !!! )
In September 2005 US President George W. Bush visited New Orleans meeting rescue workers and victims of Hurricane Katrina. He then spoke to reporters reassuring people that there was "a flow of progress".
When the Levee Breaks
Bush Cheney Condi show little concern
Jack Cafferty "Embarrasing" Bush Katrina photo-op
Katrina: CNN Jack Cafferty - Hurricane Katrina Outrage
Katrina Timeline
Condi shops and sees Broadway show Spamalot
While Bush does photo-ops and makes speeches
Blackwater in New Orleans
Making $ 250, 000 per day
Donates a total of $150,000 for Hurricane relief
see Time.com How Did This Happen?
Sunday, Sep. 04, 2005 By AMANDA RIPLEY
Hindsight is 20/20. but once in a rare while, foresight is too. For years, researchers have described exactly what would happen if a megahurricane hit New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf region. They predicted that the city levees would not hold. Their elaborate computer models showed that tens of thousands would be left behind.
They described rooftop rescues, 80% of New Orleans underwater and "toxic gumbo" purling through the streets. If experts had prophesied a terrorist attack with that kind of accuracy, they would be under suspicion for treason.
How, then, did we get here? How did the richest country on earth end up watching children cry for food in putrid encampments on the evening news? How did reporters reach crowds of the desperate in places where police, troops and emergency responders had not yet been—three days after the storm?
Deconstructing Katrina will take years. But it is already clear that the blame can be well distributed, from the White House to emergency-management officials at federal, state and local levels, all the way down to the cops who abandoned their posts in New Orleans. "The system broke," says Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Research Lab at the University of South Carolina. "A system that cannot airlift water and food to a community that's desperate for it is a system that is broken."
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and so it goes,
GORD.
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