There are bodies piled up in the freezer of the convention center in New Orleans
Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.
“Don’t step in that blood – it’s contaminated,” he said. “That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he’s an old man.”
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.“That’s a kid,” he said. “There’s another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut.”
He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
“There’s an old woman,” he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. “I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death,” he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.
You’re so right, Oliver. Freedom stinks. Time for some good old totalitarianism.
I’m not really one for gratuitous mud slinging, but this has to be your dumbest post ever.
Remember Phile, George Bush killed that kid, rather than the criminal thugs that Mayor Nagin allowed to run his city in his absence.
Busy hiding in Baton Rouge?
Why did he leave his people Oliver? Why not bus them out BEFORE the hurricane hit?
The mayor was sort of busy with the worst natural disaster in American history.
“Sort of ” is correct. Lots of school buses in New Orleans are sitting in flooded parking lots. A mayor with a clue, a mayor without time to spout off to left wing hate radio, would have had those buses out of dangerous areas and evacuating his at-risk fellow citizens.
Dugger
Oliver, only the hardcore sycophants that visit this site would take such an ignorant statement, seriously.
Maybe you could explain to us what Nagin was so busy doing, since the New Orleans disaster preparedness plan wasn’t followed.
The mayor was sort of busy with the worst natural disaster in American history. George Bush was strumming a guitar.
Where do you people get this stuff? From the WaPo, Friday 9/2:
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Nagin is blameless. I’m just wondering where this “hiding in Baton Rouge” stuff comes from.
Joseph Goebbels:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
Well, Sadie, the finger-pointing and blame-shifting isn’t surprising. I’m just trying to figure out where van gets this “he ran away” claim. He’s made it in at least three different threads now.
It’s the wingnut credo- say it 7 times and it magically becomes true.
New Orleans drowned while Bush ate cake and strummed an air guitar. And appointed a hack as head of FEMA with no experience, except raising money for Bushco.
Blanco did a good thing putting an adult in charge like James Lee Witt. Brown and Chertoff are incompetent.
Thanks, neoconslrloopy! I didn’t realize you were on our side.
Yeah, Goebbels would be bursting with pride if he could see his boys now, how they “deregulated” the media down to 11 corporations, all of them cozy as toast with the ruling party.
But I think my favorite innovation is how they use leggy blondes to deliver the official government propaganda, instead of old guys in cheap suits like the Soviets used to do. I mean that is just pure genius.
Quaker it’s simple really.
Nagin used to be a Republican. He turned Democrat when he ran for mayor, because it was a political neccessity, but he always toed the Party Line up until now. When Katrina hit he went on TV criticizing the lack of federal response, in a very emotional and powerful way.
This cannot stand. The GOP is like the mafia — if you’re in you’re in for life and you don’t betray the family. You’re supposed to stand there and watch people die all around you and suck it up for the team, keep singing hymns of praise to the leader no matter what. Barbour gets it, so they pat him on the head. Nagin doesn’t so he is the new official GOP whipping boy.
For those of you keeping score at home, van confesses in the thread below this one, “I was wrong.”
Straight out of Goering, innit?
Wasn’t he the one who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it?” I’ve heard tell they’ve got those words carved in marble somewhere in the Fox News corporate headquarters ….
Giuliani was a better manager and more reassuring, but also he was dealing with a problem that, while horrific, was considerably more contained than the one Nagin faced. First a hurricane, then floods, then major lawlessness, then refugees. I don’t think there’s a mayor in the country who would have had the resources to deal with something this big after the fact. Now, preparation is another story — Nagin should have had a better plan in place — but once the levees broke given the deplorable state of readiness at every level, this was bigger than any mayor.
The Mayor clearly could have used those buses. He always clearly could have had a better plan in place for the poorest of New Orleans. But the Mayor has never owed his allegiance to the poorest of New Orleans. He came into office as a “reformer” with ties to the business class and as a lifelong Republican. He didn’t give a damn about the 30% of New Orleanians living in poverty as none of them voted for him. But when he saw his entire city in shambles, and when the poor were no longer suffering in the anonymity of the Bienville Housing Projects but right in the Morial Convention Center, he was moved to tears. Perhaps he woke up at that moment. His disaster plan was inadequate in theory, and poorly executed. The real question is whether or not a mayor who actually cared about the poor would have done the same thing. Chances are, Giuliani would have been ever worse.
Can any of you Bush bashers chew gum and walk at the same time?
Like admitting that there may be other people at fault in the way they responded to the disaster other than Bush and other Republicans?
Here’s what Brad DeLong, one of your guys, says about Nagin:
I’d provide the link, except that seems to result in posts not being accepted, so you can go to j-bradford-delong dot net and find it yourself. You owe it to yourself to read it. Nagin KNEW exactly what the impact of a storm like Katrina would be, KNEW that he wouldn’t be able to get the poorest resident of his city out of town, and did nothing to prepare them for it, didn’t warn them, and didn’t contact anyone at the state or Federal level to ask for help before the storm hit.
By the way, DeLong is also calling for the impeachment of George Bush over what happened. I don’t agree with him, but at least he’s not a one-note Johnny or an apologist for Nagin like Oliver and many of the people who post comments here.
You’ve got to be kidding me. The Mayor used to be a Republican! Yeah, that’s it! He used to be a Republican! No wonder he didn’t execute the city’s evacuation plan: he doesn’t like black people!
The mayor was sort of busy with the worst natural disaster in American history.
The mayor was too busy being concerned about the reaction of local business to a mandatory evacuation. So that’s why he ordered a voluntary evacuation on Saturday, August 27th at around 5:pm, less than 48 hours before the storm hit. The city should have started mandatory evacuations the day before which would have allowed them the time to move the elderly and the sick. All of this of course, was in their own freaking plans they came up with. Oh and the plans dealt with a Category 3 hurricane. A mandatory evacuation wasn’t ordered until Sunday, less than 24 hours before the storm hit. It was the White House that urged them to do so earlier, but they held out.
Let’s also not forget that it was local officials who drew up a plan that basically said to the poor: “You’re on your own.” in the event of a hurricane.
Of course all of a sudden Mayor Nagin’s history as a Republican is being thrown around when a few days ago he was a “hero.”
No, SadieB, first answer my question.
How is pointing out that George Bush is not responsible for every single tragedy that occurred as a result of Katrina equivalent to “fanatical devotion”?
When a fellow Bush critic like Brad DeLong points out that others (maybe ever others who are not Republicans) share some of the responsibility for what happened, does that mean that he has a fanatical devotion to Bush, and has psychological problems, as you imply in your comment?
Tell me, because I just don’t get it.
That’s not fanatical devotion.
Fanatical devotion is denying that George Bush is to blame for anything, ever, even if his appointees are catastrophically unqualified for the jobs he’s given them.
Fanatical devotion is searching high and low for others to blame to try to take the spotlight off of George Bush.
Fanatical devotion is excusing top Bush administration officials who were too busy vacationing to come to work during one of the worst natural disasters in our history, preferring instead to take in a Broadway show.
Honestly, Tuco, I would be satisfied if you people could admit he was responsible for even one thing. Just one thing. Can you do that? He’s been president five years now, has he ever done one thing wrong in all that time? One tiny little mistake? A teeny tiny one?
Jay, scratch, the nonsense about Nagin having been a Republican is being thrown around now in response to accusations that it’s the “corrupt, Democratic” local government that’s to blame.
There’ll be plenty of blame for Mr. Nagin. If my opinion mattered, I’d advise him to seek a new line of work.
Mr. Nagin’s failings notwithstanding, FEMA–headed and staffed through political patronage–failed miserably in the aftermath of the storm.
Oh goody, Bush lovers. I have been looking for some of these.
Tell me boys, what is it about George Bush? Is it the tight pants, the big ears? Is it the fact that he has a whole closetful of Village People costumes and isn’t afraid to wear them? Oh alright, I know we haven’t seen the Indian outfit yet but we’ve got three and a half years to go, so don’t worry, it’s coming.
Or maybe it’s something about yourselves? Daddy never paid attention to you? Maybe you got beaten up by that kid in eighth grade too many times, until you started to look forward to it? (no need to be ashamed of this, Lawrence of Arabia had the same problem)
Somebody tell me please, why this man inspires such fanatical devotion in his followers because seriously, I just don’t get it.
…total anarchy.
Nothing quite like a literal thirst to put your philosophical or political thirst into perspective.
You’re all angry at each other. What a horrendous, egregious public fight. I shouldn’t let it get to me. When there were only four mythical people on the planet, we had a murder. Ten thousand years of written history and we’ve been killing ourselves all along.
Hell and high water have come. Bridges have been crossed, burned and bombed.
Time for me to read Wm Butler Yeats’ “Second Coming” again.
Whatever floats your boat, Mucker.
Man, this is getting sad. Here’s what really happened: Everybody motherfucking fucked up. And people died.
But if Nagin fucked up that doesn’t get Banco off the hook and if Banco fucked up that doesn’t get Brown off the hook and if Chertoff fucked up that doesn’t get Bush off the hook. No one gets off with portioning out the corpses according to percentage of contribution to the failure. Nagin with 5 to 6 thousand bodies at his feet. Bush with 3 to 4 thousand at his. Katrina was the disaster. The response was the tragedy. Every player involved in the tragedy stands equally to blame: Bush, Nagin, Banco, Chertoff, Brown et. al. chained together before the vast, stinking evidence of their collective incompetence and indifference.
That said, we are left with the question: Is this government ready to protect Americans if another disaster, manmade or otherwise, were to happen tomorrow or next week or next year? I think we can all see now that the answer is no. As I commented in an above thread, if the disaster was nuclear terrorist attack, there would be no local officials to blame. It would just be Boom. New Orleans is gone. What’s it going to be Mr. President? Mr. Chertoff? Mr. Brown? Everybody gets the blame for their tragic response to Katrina. But some of those people are also responsible for the nation as a whole, as well. Can we now trust them knowing what we now know about their competence having seen them in action? Bush has a lot more to answer for than his dismal leadership in the aftermath of Katrina. I’d like to see some of you Bush supporters address this reality of the post-Katrina world.
he was responsible for even one thing. Just one thing. Can you do that? He s been president five years now, has he ever done one thing wrong in all that time? One tiny little mistake? A teeny tiny one?
He dropped his dog once. Oh, and he spent $200,000,000,000 on a vainglorious search for non-existent (or exaggerated giving him the benefit of the doubt) WMD’s in Iraq. Oh, and he sits down with his jacket buttoned (which is a fashion faux-pas).
Come Hell and High Water, Dubya!
What a group of total idiots. Nobody was responsible for the hurricane. The focus ought to be on the positive: how can we pick up the pieces and set things right. Why must everything be politicized. This site immediately set out to exploit the tragedy by blaming Bush for just about everything (with the exception of one or two sane voices). We responded back by blaming the NO and La. Democrats. Truth is everybody probably could have done a little better, maybe even much better, but the big deal is the hurricane damage – an act of mother nature. Nobody wanted those deaths. Why not grow up and quit playing the blame game. Do you ever set aside the quest for polititical power?
One-sided? Is it one-sided to suggest that beyond the questions of how local and state governments reponded to Katrina is the larger question of how well the federal government is prepared to deal with catastrophic disasters on a national scale? We all know that three is the magic number for al-Qaeda’s coordinated attacks. Could FEMA handle that? And exactly what should we be discussing about efforts today? Today? Give to the Red Cross or other charity is the best I can do. You want I should figure out how to make better use of firemen held up in Atlanta by FEMA because they’re needed to fill out paperwork? I think the answer there is obvious on its face.
Frame, I could understand and even agree with some of what you say if it wasn’t so one-sided. But I’m hearing almost nothing about what now needs to be done, but much more about what selected federal government only people did not do. I’m sorry,as with 9-11, hindsight on the part of the scrubs is so damned accurate and devastating.
Its time to put aside politics and get to work.
Dugger
Dugger –
Who exactly is blaming anyone for the hurricane? The discussions here and elsewhere all along have been about the government’s response to the hurricane. See the difference? And there is no probably about it. Everybody could have done a much better job, to put it mildly. And of course nobody wanted these deaths. But since when are good intentions also good excuses? And since when is asking for accountability irresponsible? The big deal is that Katrina has shown that this government is woefully unprepared to deal with catastrophic disaster. That is simply unexcusable. Part of figuring out how we can pick up the pieces and set things right is figuring out what went wrong and making sure that there are consequences for incompetence when and where its discovered. It’s called learning from your mistakes and cleaning house. It isn’t about political power, it’s about ensuring that the next time, which could come at any time, our response is up to the task.
You’re full of it Dugger; in another thread, Oliver posted the Democrat response to help solve this problem and all you and your right-wing ilk were able to do was say that it wasn’t good enough because it was giving money away instead of holding the vicitims responsible for their own survival.
At least you’re consistent in your hypocrisy Dugger:
Quaker There ll be plenty of blame for Mr. Nagin. If my opinion mattered, I d advise him to seek a new line of work.
frameone Every player involved in the tragedy stands equally to blame: Bush, Nagin, Banco, Chertoff, Brown et. al.
So now that it’s not one-sided, care to express your own even-handed opinion?