destruction

Wow. Good to know that Clinton is still the president. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Ten Commandments How does it feel to be a sinner, con boy? That's right. Take the blame away from Bush and scapegoat the ones who had nothing to do with Katrina. It was BUSH who gutted federal emergency aid. Not Clinton. Clinton did not divert fed emergency aid to fund the Iraq war in 2002 before the war began a year later. Remember, Clinton is not the president. This is coming from the US Army Corp of Engineers. Get it right. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/budget-cuts-delayed-flood-controls/2005/09/02/1125302739014.html ^^ Owned by Ruppert 'Fox News' Murdoch so don't go playing the "objective card'. It's unwinnable against this hand. A royal flush. And THIS is from a report from the USACE on Sept 3rd. http://www.usace.army.mil/PA-09-01.pdf Who is responsible again??? By the way, the last time I checked Bush took full blame. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/13/katrina.washington/ Yeah, yeah... "Liberal Media". I know what you're thinking. You still don't believe he said this?? Paragraph 44: The transcript of "President Welcomes President Talabani of Iraq to the White House", September 13, 2005. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050913-5.html Again, who is responsible??

Yes I am. Are you sure you're 31 and not 13? Bush is the anti Christ and is plotting to destroy blacks and he hates blacks. There I said it. Shoot me. See? I'm not afraid to write it. The first amendment allows me to say that. What are you gonna do about it loser? Gonna beat up digital.... for saying it too??

NO!

The anti american asshole who deleted my post hates freedom of speech and should be thrown out of this country because he hates america.

Go join your dead cousin in Iraq.

Don't like democracy, get the fuck out of the country.

FACT: I am a 47 year old who OWNS his own house. MY parents are dead and you spend your days playing armchair general to a war that you'd rather see someone elses kid get killed in when you KNOW you could be enlisting and fighting the same war you support yourself but you rather use lame excuses to keep yourself out of it because you're too much of a pussy to fight the same war you support.... Only to support Bush, of course and for your stock in Halliburton which has doubled (that must make you happy to know your stock doubled). By the way, I actually work thank you very much you chickenhawk blowboy poster whore for the neocon bottom feeders. Keep sucking on Bush's dick. Die of AIDS cocksmoker. Pussy.

FACT: THIS FLAG KILLS... BURN BABY BURN!!

Who says this. Got proof? Otherwise, shut up. You have no proof and you know it so why the lies? C'mon... your credibility depends on in. Sink or swim. Oh wait.... You can't prove it. Nevermind. Just shut the fuck up and keep swinging on headpusher's left nut..... fag.

what bush sees in his nightmares...

By Kevin Zeese October 1, 2005 Recent weeks have been mostly good news for the anti-war movement and mostly bad news for the 'stay the course' occupiers. The recent successes of the anti-war movement provide a foundation on which to build, too escalate efforts and let politicians who support the war know that their political careers are jeopardized by the failed Iraq policy. President Bush is predicting more violence in Iraq – he called an escalation likely but not to worry according to the 'bring them on' president: “Our troops are ready for it.†And Army Gen. George Casey, Jr. who had suggested this summer that the U.S. could begin a “fairly substantial†withdrawal of troops early next year took back that promise this week saying “we're in a period of a little greater uncertainty.†In a closed door meeting with members of Congress he told them the number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one. The obvious reality is the U.S. is losing ground in Iraq. And, U.S. allies in the Middle East are warning of a crumbling situation in Iraq. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister publicly predicted Iraq's dissolution and a civil war in a press conference in Washington last week. Desperate for a victory the Bush administration announced the killing of the supposed #2 man for Al Qaeda in Iraq – but it turns out Newsweek reports that he may not have been as important as originally proclaimed. And popularity for the war and President Bush's handling of it are moving strongly in favor of withdrawal. This is likely to worsen as a federal court ordered the release of more than 70 photographs and three videos depicting abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This will further demonstrate the absurdity of the “stay the course to finish the job†position – as it highlights how it is impossible for the U.S. to bring stability to Iraq. In addition to the torture photos, also coming out are gruesome photos taken by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The soldiers show pride in their 'kills' and people, seemingly some U.S. soldiers, make sarcastic comments, e.g. a photo of a head blown off saying “he lost his head†or “what a headache.†These photos and comments can be viewed but are incredibly gruesome so if you do not have a strong stomach or if there are children nearby don't go to the hyperlink. I share these because it is important that we know what is being done in our name and with our tax dollars. These photos also help explain why up to 30 percent of returning soldiers will face severe mental health problems. No doubt these photos are being shared around the world and creating enemies for Americans – we should not be surprised when Americans are attacked. There can no longer be an excuse for not knowing “why do they hate us?†At the same time the anti-war movement had a major success in Washington, DC with a massive demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people. The crowd crossed generations, races and ethnic backgrounds and was a cross-section of America. It highlighted veterans of the Iraq War, military families and religious leaders. In addition to the massive demonstration there was a United for Peace and Justice sponsored lobby day where more than 700 people lobbied elected officials. And, the several days of activities included civil disobedience where 40 people were arrested at the Pentagon and more than 370 people were arrested at the White House – three times larger then the previous record for arrests for civil disobedience at the White House. In recent months, anti-war Democrats have gotten organized and are speaking out more effectively than they had been through the 'Out of Iraq Caucus' in the House. In the Senate Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) have spoken out for bringing U.S. troops home. And, the anti-war movement has begun to see some breakthroughs in the Republican Party – most notably Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Ron Paul (R-TX). And, votes in the House of Representatives on whether to develop an exit strategy have come within 100 votes of winning majority support. But, the anti-war movement has been unable to break into mainstream Democratic Party leadership in either the House or the Senate. These “leaders†recognize the disaster of Iraq – know the war is not winnable – but seem to believe it is best to let the Bush Administration wallow in the failure rather than help lead the country out of it. This immoral position results in the needless deaths of Americans and Iraqis and will come back to haunt the Party. The anti-war movement needs to breakthrough the next level of political support for the war. A particular focus should be put on Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whose district is strongly anti-war and out of step with her views, and John P. Murtha (D – PA) the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, who was recently in Iraq and knows the situation is deteriorating, is untenable and will end with the U.S. withdrawing. The Iraq War is undermining the morality of the United States and destroying our great noble purpose of protecting human rights and encouraging democracy around the world. It is creating enemies for the United States that will last generations and sapping the precious resources of American lives while bleeding our treasury of resources much-needed at home for the so-called rebuilding of Iraq which is more so institutionalized corruption. Not only is the anti-war movement right – but it must demonstrate that this is the defining issue of our times and therefore must get more aggressive with those who want to stay the immoral course of occupation. The anti-war movement should follow the lead of Cindy Sheehan who is focusing her attention on those in Congress who continue to oppose withdrawal from Iraq. She has not limited herself to Republicans like John McCain but has also focused on Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Hilary Clinton (D-NY) and John Kerry (D-MA). These elected representatives need to be pressured from all angles. Activists should be sitting in their offices in protest, hounding them wherever they appear in public, funders should be withdrawing their support and candidates should be challenging them in the primary and general election. Most important, the anti-war movement should not repeat the mistake of 2004 where many of its leaders supported the pro-war Kerry. People should refuse to support any candidate who continues to vote for funding the illegal occupation of Iraq. The immoral quagmire of Iraq cannot be justified and anyone who votes to continue it is not fit to hold office. The 2006 election year should be the anti-war election year. Anti-war activists should target key war supporters from both parties to let them know that their political careers are at risk. As Frederick Douglas said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.†We must challenge those in power and not be disheartened by their opposition for, as Douglas also said: “The resistance encountered now predicates hope . . . only as we rise . . . do we encounter opposition.†The movement to withdraw U.S. troops, contractors and corporate interests from Iraq is gaining speed but must go from strength to strength and escalate efforts to end the occupation. Integrity, patriotism and common sense are on the side of withdrawal – now the political will must be developed so the United States can regain its standing in the world and our sense of morality at home. Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising and a candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

FACT: You have no proof. You fail to defend your position. FACT: You put Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush and David Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, yourself and the rest of the Bush neocon bottom feeders above the facts to boast your baseless 'holier than thou', "I told you so" mantra. FACT: All Bush lovers are cock jockeys because... FACT: You are a God forgotten fully used up dirty AIDS bin. FACT: Your whorish mother gives fine blowjobs. FACT: You're equipped with the intellect of snot dribble. FACT: You have been owned, boned, droned and re-owned.

BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS By JENNIFER LUCE and DON GENTILE Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal. Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe. Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster. His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George." Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add. "When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!" "Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband." Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink. A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months. "The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained. The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control." Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him." Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper." Bush's history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: "One thing I remember, and I'm most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!" Age 26 in 1972, he reportedly rounded off a night's boozing with his 16-year-old brother Marvin by challenging his father to a fight. On November 1, 2000, on the eve of his first presidential election, Bush acknowledged that in 1976 he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol near his parents' home in Maine. Age 30 at the time, Bush pleaded guilty and paid a $150 fine. His driving privileges were temporarily suspended in Maine. "I'm not proud of that," he said. "I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson." In another interview around that time, he said: "Well, I don't think I had an addiction. You know it's hard for me to say. I've had friends who were, you know, very addicted... and they required hitting bottom (to start) going to AA. I don't think that was my case." During his 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28. Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great. "I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening." Published on: 09/21/2005 http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426

Damn. I should've remembered that it was all Clinton's fault. My mistake.

Translation: http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp#BODY http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=293 PS... YANKEES SUCK!

Don't just say it, back it!! http://www.futurepower.org/cia_trained_bin_laden2.htm PWN3D! If the US did not train him, who did? Now prove they didn't. Lets see it. FACT: Igloo is an immature little nazi cunt who cannot handle the truth. FACT: Igloo is an immature little nazi cunt who has no defense for his arguments hence why he attacks with insults instead of addressing points. BURN BABY BURN!!

Left to Die in a New Orleans Prison By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Posted on September 28, 2005, Printed on October 2, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/story/26073/ Editor's Note: The following is a transcript of an interview between Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, and members of the group Human Rights Watch. Amy Goodman: It has been nearly one month since Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southern coast of the United States, decimating communities in Mississippi and Louisiana. These past weeks, we have reported on the horrors faced by people in New Orleans, in particular as they struggled to survive. One story we have looked at is the fate of those held in prison as the hurricane hit the city. Weeks later, there are still serious questions about what happened inside facilities like the Orleans Parish Prison. The group Human Rights Watch has just issued one of the first independent analyses investigating what happened in the jails. The group alleges that in one facility the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of prisoners.The group also says that there are some 517 prisoners unaccounted for and is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the Orleans Sheriff's Department. We're joined now by Corinne Carey. She's a researcher for Human Rights Watch. Welcome to Democracy Now! Corrine Carey: Thanks. It's great to be here. Goodman: Well, you've just recently returned from Louisiana. Tell us what you found? Carey: We went down to investigate claims that we had been hearing that prisoners were abandoned in one of the facilities -- Templeman III is the name of the building -- and that some inmates had seen inmates left in their cells while they were on their way out, when they were finally evacuated Thursday and Friday of the week after the storm. So the first thing that we did was [ask] for a list of prisoners that were held at Orleans Parish Prison prior to the storm hitting, and then we also obtained a list from the Department of Corrections of all offenders that had been evacuated from New Orleans. We went through that list and came up with 517 people who were still unaccounted for. We're certainly not saying that those people drowned in the facility, but there are credible reports from inmates of being left in that facility in locked cells. And so we'd like to know from the Orleans Sheriff and from the Department of Corrections what happened to those 517 people. Goodman: What are some of the stories that you have heard in your questioning? Carey: It's clear to us from talking to inmates in that facility -- and other lawyers in Louisiana have talked to well over 1,000 prisoners at this point -- that by Monday when the storm hit, guards were no longer in the facility. The inmates were left to fend for themselves during the storm. The most disturbing thing is that the water began to rise in many of the buildings. Some inmates tell us that the water had come up to their chest level, and they were still in locked cells. Some other inmates helped them get out of those cells and escape the floodwaters to higher levels of the facility. They were also left there without any food or water for up to four days. There was no air circulation, and the toilets had started to back up. So the stench was unbearable for these prisoners. They started to break windows to let the air in, but also to let people outside know that there were still people in this building that had begun to flood. Goodman: We're joined also on the telephone by Dan Bright. He's a former resident of New Orleans, detained in the Orleans Parish Prison, building Templeman III, the night before Hurricane Katrina struck, now relocated to Grand Prairie, Texas. Can you tell us what the Templeman III building is, Dan? Dan Bright: The Templeman III building is a receiving cell. You go there, and they hold you until they put you into a steady housing development. And like she was saying, we were strictly abandoned. They just left us. When we realized what was going on, it was too late. It was total chaos. The water was up to our chest. You had guys laying in the water trying to climb to the top of their bunks. You had older guys who didn't have any medicine who we were trying to help. And the way we got out was we had to kick the cell door for maybe like an hour or two. And the cell doors, they sits on this hinge. You have to kick it off the hinge. And when you kicked it off the hinge you have to slide out the door. And Templeman III is...two levels. You had an upper level and bottom level. The guys on the bottom level was totally stuck in this water. Lights was out. So we had to get out on the top level and come down and help those guys. And the police, they had left. Goodman: Wait a second. You're saying that the police, the guards, were gone? Bright: The guard was gone. Goodman: There were only the prisoners? Bright: There was only -- that's us. Goodman: And you were locked in. Bright: Right. Correct. Goodman: And so how did you escape? Bright: Well, we had to kick -- like I said, we had to kick the cells, maybe [for]hours. You had to squeeze out of the cells. We found pipes, anything that we could find to pry the cells open downstairs to help the guys downstairs. We broke the windows to try to signal for help. No one came to our rescue. Goodman: So you made your way out of the windows? Bright: We made our way out of the cells and to...the lower levels where most of the water was at. And we broke that window and climbed out. The dorm was made strictly like a college dorm, just like two cells into one. You have to forgive me -- I'm kind of still groggy, because I'm just getting up. So I'm trying to explain myself the best I can. Goodman: Thank you. So, some of you made it out. What about people who were locked in cells? Bright: They couldn't get out. We couldn't help all of them. Goodman: Could you hear them? Bright: Yeah, they were trying to get them out. We couldn't help everybody. The water was constantly rising. Goodman: So when you got out, what did you do? Bright: When we got out, they had maybe like ten deputies outside the building with boats. Goodman: They had deputies outside the building but none of the deputies inside the building to help you? Bright: None. It was like, if you get out, you get out. It's not too bad. So when we got out, they took us to a bridge, what's called an overpass bridge, and they just put us on these boats, brought us to this bridge and left us there for maybe like three days without food or water or anything. They just left us there. Goodman: Could you see the jail from where you were on the overpass? Bright: Right. Yeah. You stare at guys in the windows trying to get their attention. They wasn't even paying attention. They had guys burning stuff, putting up signs, trying to get any kind of help they could get. Goodman: They were burning things to get people's attention? Bright: Right. Goodman: What were the signs they were putting up that you could see from the overpass? Bright: Help signs. Goodman: Saying "Help?" Bright: Yes. You had guys burning blankets trying to get their attention. The helicopter would pass over. Guys would burn sheets up or blankets or something to try to get their attention also. Goodman: So you're saying helicopters would fly over. They would see the burning sheets. You were with deputies on the bridge. They could see like you could see? Bright: Right. Goodman: So what did they say, when you said there are men still in there? Bright: They didn't say anything. These -- most of the deputies had, you know, just gone. They didn't even bother to try to help us. And not only that, they had -- these same deputies were stealing property, our personal property. My daughter was trying to telephone me and find out where I was at, and a deputy answered my phone. Goodman: Your daughter called, and the deputy answered your cell phone? Bright: Correct. Goodman: Did you ever get your personal property back? Bright: No. Goodman: Did any of the men? Bright: No, ma'am. Goodman: Did you -- Bright: All of the guys was complaining about what was missing. Phones, their jewelry. You know. Watches. Stuff like that. Goodman: Dan Bright, we're also joined by Neal Walker. He is a Director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, speaking to us from Houston. He interviewed 48 prisoners last Wednesday. Can you describe the whole facility, Neal? Dan Bright, locked in Templeman III, but describe what is the rest of it, Templeman I and Templeman II. Neal Walker: Orleans Parish Prison, for your listeners, is really not a prison. It's a jail. It's a temporary detention facility. Other parts of the country you refer to county jails. We call them parish prisons in Louisiana. Orleans Parish Prison is, in fact, one of the country's largest jails, although New Orleans was far from one of the country's largest cities before the storm. At any given time, there would be 7,500 to 8,000 prisoners being held at Orleans Parish Prison. Now, some of these prisoners were in fact serving misdemeanor sentences, and others were picked up for parole violations, but the vast, vast majority of the prisoners being held at Orleans Parish Prison were pretrial detainees. They had only been charged. They had not been tried and convicted. Now, the complex itself includes not only the facility known as Orleans Parish Prison, the original old jail facility, but it describes a complex of other detention buildings, as well, including the house of detention, Templeman I, II, and III, and central lockup, which is a one-story facility where prisoners are processed after their arrest. And I heard accounts of that building being completely underwater. The prisoners were looking at it from the windows at Templeman III and could see that central lockup was completely underwater. Goodman: Completely underwater? Walker: Right. Goodman: How many men? Walker: I don't know how many men were in central lockup at that time. Again, that's -- you know, if you get booked where they bring you, the booking officers will bring you to central lockup, where you'll be fingerprinted, and as Dan was saying, your property will be removed and inventoried and then stored. And apparently, according to what Dan was saying, the prisoners don't go to their cells with their property. It's put in lockers, but it sounds like these deputies got into the lockers and got the prisoners' property. But those prisoners are only held at central lockup for, you know, a matter of hours as they're being processed. And then they go off to one of the other detention centers. Goodman: And so, the story that you have heard Dan Bright tell, that you've just heard the report from Corrine Carey, in your talking with scores of men, how much does that resonate? How many times did you hear that same story? Walker: You hear a very similar story from everybody who was housed where Dan was held. I mean, there were other prisoners held in different places. You know, they were locked into their cells, not able to get out. I understand in the house of detention that the guys were literally not able to get out their cells at all, and in Templeman, prisoners were able to grab shower rods and break out the windows in an attempt to gain some attention from whoever they could get to see them. But I -- you know, the stories are very consistent that floodwaters were rising, that the deputies had fled the jail, that there was no food, there was no water. The power went off, I think, sometime early Monday morning when the storm hit, and they went Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with no food. I heard one prisoner who said that water was being distributed in basins, but it looked to be as polluted as the water that was coming out of the faucets. I heard accounts of some prisoners being interviewed with ugly white sores all over their -- the skin that was exposed, and these prisoners had reported drinking the floodwaters, although I didn't see any prisoners with those sorts of infections myself. Goodman: And Neal Walker, we're going to break for stations to identify themselves, and we'll come back to this discussion about where have all of the prisoners gone? Human Rights Watch has calculated over 500 are at this point unaccounted for, just judging from the dockets before and after the hurricane. We'll also be joined by Phyllis Mann, who has been investigating this story and speaking to scores of prisoners, men who were farmed out to different prisons, and women as well, hundreds, who were brought from the jail to Angola, the maximum security prison for men. [break] Goodman: We continue the investigation into where have all of the prisoners gone after Hurricane Katrina. We are talking specifically about the Orleans Parish Prison. Our guests are Corrine Carey, researcher for Human Rights Watch. They have just put out a report "Imprisoned and Abandoned." We are also joined by Dan Bright, one of the people who was detained in the Orleans Parish Prison the night before the hurricane struck, now relocated to Texas. Phyllis Mann will join us in a minute, of Alexandria, Louisiana, criminal defense lawyer, also Neal Walker, director of Louisiana Capital Assistance Center. Corinne Carey, from your investigation, when were the authorities called to evacuate the Orleans Parish Prison? Carey: The Orleans Parish sheriff, Marlin Gusman, didn't call for assistance from the State Department of Corrections until midnight on Monday after the eye of the storm had hit and the prison had already began to flood. Other area parish prisons had called for assistance on Saturday and Sunday to start evacuating their inmates. And all of their inmates have been -- had been evacuated safely at that point. Goodman: Now, the position of the sheriff, the Orleans sheriff, is a very powerful one in New Orleans. Carey: In every parish it's one of the most powerful positions to hold, yes. Goodman: And the attorney general is the former parish sheriff? Carey: Yes. Charles Foti was the Orleans Parish sheriff before he became attorney general. Goodman: Did he design the evacuation plan? Carey: We have not been able to find the evacuation plan. We heard reports that the evacuation plan was on a website. A Department of Corrections spokesperson told us that it was on the website, but it has since been removed. So we actually, though we have made inquiries, don't know what the evacuation plan was. In any event, the Orleans Parish sheriff didn't follow any evacuation plan, nor did he fortify the institution to allow people to ride out the storm with food, water and other supplies. Goodman: So, he called on Monday night, and then what happened? Carey: Monday at midnight. The Department of Corrections then began to start evacuating prisoners. It seems to us they started on Wednesday and finished on Friday although things are very confusing, and there are a number of different buildings in that complex. Goodman: We're talking about thousands of prisoners? Carey: Over 6,000 prisoners. And prisoners from area -- other parish prisons were evacuated to Orleans Parish Prison. Goodman: To the flooded prison? Carey: Prior to the flood. Yes. They were evacuated to the prison. And so, you had people -- you had a prison that was already at capacity, and then you had maybe 2,000 more prisoners from area prisons brought in. So, that's why when you hear Dan Bright talking about breaking out of cells, there were prisoners in common areas. They were in recreational areas, they were in visiting areas. So they were not locked down, and they were able to grab pipes and break them in the absence of guards and help the other inmates break out of their cells and break the windows. Goodman: So, Dan Bright, when did you make it to the overpass? What night was it? Or what day? Bright: It was Tuesday morning. Goodman: Tuesday morning. How long did you stay on the overpass? Bright: It was Tuesday night. Sunday, I went down. Goodman: So you broke out on Tuesday? Bright: Right. After the storm had passed. And when we got out to central lockup area, back to the central lockup area, these were the other guards waiting for us outside with the boats. So they took us from central lockup area to the bridge. It was nighttime. The city was completely dark. We stood on the bridge until maybe like two days, two-and-a-half days. Goodman: Two-and-a-half days. Bright: Yeah. No food, no water. We couldn't stand up. They made us sit down. We couldn't even get up and urinate. We had to urinate on ourselves. They didn't even want us standing up. Goodman: You said you urinated on yourselves because you couldn't stand. Were you chained? Bright: Excuse me? Goodman: Were you chained? Bright: No. They didn't have any chains. They didn't have anything. They were just rushing us -- as we broke out and thought we were trying to get to our families or whatever. We weren't trying to escape. We were just trying to get away from that prison. When we got out, they snatch us, put us on airboats and bring us to the bridge. Goodman: So you stayed there for two days, no food. Water? Bright: No water. No food. They had water. But they wasn't giving us any. Goodman: And how many of you were there? Bright: It was a lot. I would say maybe like -- I couldn't tell. It was over 400. It was a lot of us. Goodman: And then after those two days, what was it? Thursday or Friday? Bright: It was Thursday when they moved us. They put us on the buses. And they brought us to this place, another jail called Hunt's Correctional Center. Goodman: Near Baton Rouge. Bright: Right. And they just put all of us in this one huge gate and made us sit on a field. And they left us there. Goodman: Sitting on the field? Bright: Right. You had to sleep on the wet grass. They didn't have anywhere we could urinate or defecate. We had to do that out in the public. You know. They gave us one blanket. We had -- that was it. You had to sleep on the wet grass. You had -- we didn't have hot food. We didn't have cold water. In fact, they come once a day and throw peanut butter sandwiches over the gate. They wouldn't even come in the gate. They would just throw it over the gate. Goodman: They threw the sandwiches at you. Bright: Correct. They were throwing them over the gate. Goodman: And then you would race for them. Bright: Right, we would fight over sandwiches. You know, it wasn't -- there wasn't any order in this yard. In fact, you had -- the entire prison system was in there. You had guys with life sentences. You know, all kind of guys that wasn't supposed to be around one another. You had federal prisoners in there. They even had this guy Len Davis in there. Goodman: Who is Len Davis? Bright: He was convicted -- he was a cop. He was an NOPD police officer, convicted for all the murder of a female. He was on death row. Goodman: He was a New Orleans Police officer on death row, and he was in there in the field with you? Bright: Right. He was back down here trying to get some time back, and he got caught up when the storm came. So they drove him in there, too. Goodman: Neal Walker, what do you know about this? Walker: Well, the first thing I can tell you is that the New Orleans Police Department is one of the most violent and corrupt police departments in the country, and Dan's absolutely right. There are two police officers on the New Orleans Police force who are actually on death row, and I have heard other accounts that Len Davis, the police officer he is referring to, was in fact on that football field, if that's what it was, where the prisoners were evacuated to upriver at the Hunt's Correctional Facility. Goodman: I want to bring Phyllis Mann into this conversation, attorney from Alexandria, Louisiana, who has been working non-stop since the hurricane, identifying people who were brought up to the Rapides Parish Prison in your area. These stories that you are hearing, you have been interviewing hundreds of people, men and then women at Angola. Are these similar to what you have heard? Phyllis Mann: They're completely similar to what I have heard. I have personally interviewed or overseen the interviewing of over 2,400 men and women between September 7 and as late as last night. And these are men and women who were at the various facilities in Orleans and the others, as Corinne referred to, that were brought to Orleans from other affected parishes. These people didn't have a chance to talk to each other. Like Dan describes, it was complete pandemonium in Orleans. As people got out of the various buildings that comprised the Orleans Parish complex there, you know, some of them spent one day on the bridge, some of them spent three days on the bridge. From there, they were randomly loaded into buses, and there was no rhyme nor reason as to who got on what bus. And they -- most of them went through Hunt Correctional and spent time on that football or soccer field or whatever it was. Some of them were there for two or three days. I saw large numbers of people who were badly, badly sunburned as a result of being out in the elements at Hunt Correctional while they waited. And then these people again randomly got distributed to in excess of 35 facilities throughout the state, and some of them are prisons, some of them are private prisons. Many, many of them are parish jails operated by local sheriffs in each parish. And as I have gone from place to place and talked to different people who had been held, they are all telling remarkably consistent stories. And many of these people have not even seen television at the point that I have talked with them. You know, it would be a week or two weeks after the hurricane, and they still had not been able to watch television to know what had happened there. So, for all of these people to tell such remarkably consistent stories, to me, is a very serious indication of the truth of what they're saying. Goodman: Dan Bright, what happened after you left Hunt? When were you taken from there somewhere else? Or were you? Bright: They took me to Rapides Parish. You had to wait in line in this football field to try to get on the bus. So, it took up to maybe like two days to a week. Fortunately, I was able to get on the bus like two-and-a-half days after. I went to Rapides Parish, where I met Miss Mann. And I can tell you it was a whole lot better. Goodman: Was it around Sunday that you made it there? Bright: Yes. It was a whole lot better living conditions from where I just came from. Goodman: And how did you ultimately get out? Bright: Out of the Rapides Center? Goodman: How did you get out of jail? How did you end up being free? Bright: Ms. Mann and a bunch of more attorneys, Ben Cohen, filed a habeas corpus for all of your misdemeanor charges, because they were violating our rights. We hadn't seen the judge. You know, most guys had served the sentence that was no more than 30 days, so they had to let us go. The D.A.s were still trying to fight that. That's another issue, though. Goodman: Phyllis Mann, explain that process. Filing the writ of habeas corpus. And who were these men who were in there? Mann: Sure. There were 199 people who had been evacuated to the Rapides Parish Detention Center. The warden and the sheriff here in Rapides Parish quickly allowed us to come in and sit down and interview those men and gather their case information. And then that was compiled into a list of the people who had already served whatever time they were supposed to serve. For example, there was one man who was in jail for reading tarot cards without a permit and was supposed to have been released prior to August 29th when the hurricane occurred, but did not get out and was still sitting there. Dan was another of those men. Some of them were in on what we call municipal charges, which are basically city violations. They're not even misdemeanors. And Ben Cohen and Marcia Widder filed a state habeas corpus action, which is the kind of pleading that you file -- it basically means, you know, to produce the body. You're requiring the person who is holding someone to produce them in court and then prove whether or not they are legally holding them. That action was filed on behalf of quite a large number of men. Nineteen of them were released when the hearing was held. But this is a long, slow process for us to have to do this on behalf of each of the over 8,000 people who are currently being held. Goodman: Corrine Carey of Human Rights Watch, your final comment? Carey: Sure. I just wanted to add that we have also spoken with corrections officers who say the same kinds of things. They saw prisoners hanging out of the windows. They saw the signs. And they, too, have concerns. It's hard to describe, but the corrections officers, many of them, feel that that were abandoned at the jail, as well. It's really a failure to evacuate. The corrections officers and the inmates were put in jeopardy. The inmates happened to be locked in their cells. Goodman: And so, now what happens? How does the accounting take place. For example, have the authorities gone into the prison at this point to look into the cells where men perhaps couldn't get out? Carey: A spokesperson from the Orleans Parish sheriff's office said that the sheriff had gone into the jails to inspect for damage. We don't know. We contacted FEMA to see whether anyone from the federal agencies had been in, and we haven't gotten response from them. The State Department of Corrections has not been in, as far as we last knew, to inspect the facility. What we would like is we would like the Department of Justice to do an investigation of their own. We need to know what happened in that jail, whether there were bodies left and whether there were any casualties. Goodman: Again, the number of unaccounted-for prisoners? Carey: There were 517 the last we checked, 130 of them being from Templeman III, the building that we have talked about today. Goodman: And guards, any missing guards? Carey: Not as far as we know, but the thing about the guards is that they were left on the overpass bridge. They were not transported to other facilities. They made their way in small groups of their own to shelters, to the stadium, to the Convention Center. They were not -- there's no keeping track of where the guards went from there. They didn't go with the prisoners. Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now! © 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/26073/

Eight Big Lies About Katrina By Jeremy Schulman and Raphael Schweber-Koren, Media Matters for America Posted on September 9, 2005, Printed on October 2, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/story/25227/ In the past week, Bush administration officials and conservative commentators have repeatedly used the national media to spread misinformation about the federal government's widely criticized response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. 1. Bush: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" On the Sept. 1 broadcast of ABC's Good Morning America, President Bush told host Diane Sawyer, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that protected New Orleans from flooding. As Media Matters for America has noted, Sawyer did not challenge Bush's claim, despite numerous, repeated warnings by government officials, experts and the media that a major hurricane could cause levee breaches resulting in catastrophic flooding. A September 2 New York Times front-page article repeated Bush's false claim without challenge -- even though a Times editorial the same day declared, "Disaster planners were well aware that New Orleans could be flooded by the combined effects of a hurricane and broken levees." A Sept. 5 CNN.com article reported that Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff falsely told reporters that "planners" did not predict a breach of the levees that would flood the city. As CNN.com reported, Chertoff said, "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight." But unlike the Times, CNN.com noted that "officials have warned for years that a Category 4 [hurricane] could cause the levees to fail." The CNN.com article added that in an August 31 interview on CNN's Larry King Live, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it." But in the same Larry King Live interview, Brown responded to complaints that rescue efforts were not moving quickly enough by insisting, "And I must say this storm is much, much bigger than anyone expected." Additionally, as journalist Joshua Micah Marshall noted on Talking Points Memo, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield "talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas" on August 28 [st. Petersburg Times, 8/30/05]. The Washington Post quoted Mayfield on September 6: "They knew that this one was different. ... I don't think Mike Brown or anyone else in FEMA could have any reason to have any problem with our calls. ... They were told ... We said the levees could be topped." 2. Chertoff strained credulity in defense of Bush, claimed levee breaks and massive flooding came as a surprise -- more than 12 hours after local media reported them On Sept. 4, Chertoff appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and attempted to explain Bush's discredited claim that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." After host Tim Russert asked Chertoff how the president could "be so wrong, be so misinformed," Chertoff suggested that Bush had been referring to newspaper reports the morning after the storm that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet" because the eye of the storm had passed to the east of the city. But more than 12 hours before the appearance of those headlines in print, a post on the weblog of the New Orleans Times-Picayune -- dated August 29, 2 p.m. CT -- reported, "City Hall confirmed a breach of the levee along the 17th Street Canal at Bellaire Drive, allowing water to spill into Lakeview." This initial report on the Times-Picayune weblog was followed throughout the afternoon and evening of August 29 by reports of other levee breaks and massive flooding. While Chertoff said he recognized that the city's levee system failed sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning -- in fact, the first breaks occurred earlier, as noted above and as Think Progress noted in its detailed Hurricane Katrina timeline -- he insisted that "it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake [Pontchartrain] was going to start to drain into the city." According to Chertoff, this "second catastrophe really caught everybody by surprise" and was a major reason for the delay in the government's emergency response. Questioning Chertoff further, Russert pointed out that the Times-Picayune published a five-part series in June 2002, in which it warned that if a large hurricane hit New Orleans, the city's levees would likely be topped or broken -- resulting in catastrophic flooding and thousands of deaths. Russert added that "last summer FEMA, who reports to you, and the LSU Hurricane Center, and local and state officials did a simulated Hurricane Pam in which the levees broke. ... Thousands drowned." Chertoff then clarified, "What I said was not that we didn't anticipate that there's a possibility the levees will break. What I said was, in this storm, what happened is, the storm passed and passed without the levees breaking on Monday. Tuesday morning, I opened newspapers and saw headlines that said 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet,' which surprised people. What surprised them was that the levee broke overnight and the next day and, in fact, collapsed. That was a surprise." Even accepting as true Chertoff's incredible suggestion that he -- the secretary of Homeland Security -- and the president of the United States relied on the print media for their information on the situation in New Orleans, as Think Progress points out, had administration officials "bothered to read the full text of the three articles they found with favorable headlines, they would have realized that federal government help was needed immediately." Moreover, while Chertoff did not indicate which headlines he was referring to, many newspapers -- in addition to the Times-Picayune -- did report on broken levees and significant flooding. For example, on August 30, the Los Angeles Times reported that a levee break had occurred by late morning August 29, with water from the break "spill[ing] through the area, flooding the town's two main shelters and swamping the local National Guard armory, leaving even public safety officials homeless." Or Chertoff could have turned on the television. On the August 30 broadcast of NBC's Today, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams reported at 7:05 a.m. ET, "There has been a huge development overnight ... the historic French Quarter, dry last night and it is now filling with water. This is water from nearby Lake Pontchartrain; the levees failed overnight." Indeed, Chertoff's and Bush's professed ignorance notwithstanding, the federal government was well aware of the continuing threat of the levees breaking. Just hours after the storm passed on Monday, August 29, FEMA director Brown confirmed that the potential for catastrophic flooding remained. In an interview with Brown, NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer noted, "In New Orleans, in particular, they're worried about the levees giving way or the canals not holding, and they're worried about toxic runoff." Brown responded that even though the storm had weakened, there was still a 15- to 20-foot storm surge causing "the water out of Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf and the Mississippi continue to converge upon Louisiana." Brown added, "So we're still ready for a major disaster." 3. Brown: "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" On the Sept. 2 broadcast of NBC's Today, FEMA director Brown told host Katie Couric, "We've provided food to the people at the [New Orleans' Morial] Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day." Couric did not challenge this statement. But on Sept. 1, NBC News photojournalist Tony Zumbado reported on MSNBC Live: ZUMBADO: I can't put it into words the amount of destruction that is in this city and how these people are coping. They are just left behind. There is nothing offered to them. No water, no ice, no C-rations, nothing, for the last four days. They were told to go to the convention center. They did, they've been behaving. It's unbelievable how organized they are, how supportive they are of each other. They have not started any melees, any riots. They just want food and support. And what I saw there I've never seen in this country. We need to really look at this situation at the convention center. It's getting very, very crazy in there and very dangerous. Somebody needs to come down with a lot of food and a lot of water. 4. Chertoff: "Apparently, some time on Wednesday, people started to go to the convention center spontaneously" On the Sept. 1 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now, Brown claimed, "Every person in that convention center, we just learned about that today [Thursday, September 1]." During a September 4 interview with Chertoff on CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, host Blitzer replayed Brown's comments. In response, Chertoff said: CHERTOFF: Well, I mean, this is clearly something that was disturbing. It was disturbing to me when I learned about it, which came as a surprise. You know, the very day that this emerged in the press, I was on a video conference with all the officials, including state and local officials. And nobody -- none of the state and local officials or anybody else -- was talking about a convention center. The original plan, as I understand it, was to have the Superdome be the place of refuge, of last resort. Apparently, some time on Wednesday, people started to go to the convention center spontaneously.Chertoff's claim that hurricane survivors sought refuge in the convention center under their own initiative echoed his September 4 Meet the Press interview, in which he suggested, "We became aware of the fact at some point that people began to go to the convention center on their own, spontaneously, in order to shelter there." Chertoff's statements were false, but neither Blitzer nor Russert challenged them. Though scenes of thousands of hurricane victims awaiting water, food, and buses at the convention center were not broadcast on television until Thursday, Sept. 1, Chertoff and Brown would have had access to media reports about the convention center before then. As early as Aug. 29, Times-Picayune staff writer Bruce Nolan wrote an article for the Newhouse News Service in which he reported, "City officials said they might open the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center as a temporary refuge to shelter an estimated 50,000 people made homeless by the storm." Nolan's article appeared in the Times-Picayune on August 30. Beginning Aug. 31, other reports of survivors at the convention center emerged: Knight Ridder, Aug. 31: "Derwin DeGruy had been kicked out of two hotels, the first on Sunday right before the storm hit, and the second one on Tuesday morning after it hit. He and about 50 other people found makeshift shelter on a ramp leading to the mall and parking garage at the New Orleans Convention Center. They rigged places for people to go to the bathroom, pooled their water for the babies, placed some blankets on the concrete and decided to wait and see what happened." Associated Press, August 31: "The 37-year-old banker -- who admitted to looting some food from a nearby supermarket -- said the hotel guests were told they were being taken to a convention center, but from there, they didn't know." Associated Press, Aug. 31: "After several hours, a small fleet of rented moving trucks showed up to take the people to the downtown convention center so they could be taken out of the city. Police herded people up metal ramps like cattle into the unrefrigerated boxes." By Sept. 1, when Brown claimed FEMA first learned about the situation at the convention center, TV networks were broadcasting footage of thousands of survivors waiting for water, food, and evacuation buses. Despite Chertoff's later insistence that New Orleans residents "spontaneously" converged on the convention center, the September 1 broadcast of ABC's Nightline included footage of a law enforcement official instructing survivors to go there: SURVIVOR: Ain't nobody helping us. LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL: I understand. SURVIVOR: No, ain't nobody doing anything for us. LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL: Y'all got to go to the convention center. 5. Chertoff pointed fingers: "New Orleans officials and the state officials ... called for the Superdome to be the refuge of last resort" In his Sept. 4 interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Chertoff attempted to place blame for the conditions at the Superdome solely with state and local officials. Chertoff asserted, "My understanding is, and again this is something that's going to go back -- we're going to go back over after the fact -- is the plan that the New Orleans officials and the state officials put together called for the Superdome to be the refuge of last resort." But this claim is misleading at best. As The Washington Post reported on September 3, a FEMA official acknowledged participating in meetings in which the plan to use the Superdome as a shelter for thousands of evacuees was discussed: Brown, the agency's director, told reporters Saturday in Louisiana that he did not have a sense of what was coming last weekend. "I was here on Saturday and Sunday, it was my belief, I'm trying to think of a better word than typical -- that minimizes, any hurricane is bad -- but we had the standard hurricane coming in here, that we could move in immediately on Monday and start doing our kind of response-recovery effort," he said. "Then the levees broke, and the levees went, you've seen it by the television coverage. That hampered our ability, made it even more complex." But other officials said they warned well before Monday about what could happen. For years, said another senior FEMA official, he had sat at meetings where plans were discussed to send evacuees to the Superdome. "We used to stare at each other and say, 'This is the plan? Are you really using the Superdome?' People used to say, what if there is water around it? They didn't have an alternative," he recalled. Moreover, the plan to use the Superdome as a shelter for evacuees was widely known. The 2002 Times-Picayune series on the potential for a catastrophic hurricane reported that of the estimated 200,000 New Orleans residents who would likely remain in the city, "ome will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city." 6. Chertoff falsely minimized federal government's role in Katrina response as subordinate to states The Bush administration has responded to criticism of its role in the Katrina disaster by attempting to deflect blame onto state and local officials in Louisiana [The New York Times, 9/5/05 ]. One way they are doing that is to claim that the federal government's role in a natural disaster of this magnitude is to provide support to state and local governments and work at their behest. Conservative media figures immediately fell into line, echoing the administration's claim that the federal government's role was subordinate (see here and here). In fact, the Department of Homeland Security's December 2004 National Response Plan clearly indicates that in these situations, the federal government will pre-empt state and local efforts and provide immediate assistance to the affected area. On Sept. 1, two days after the levees were breached, Chertoff, at a press conference announcing the start of "National Preparedness Month 2005," characterized the federal role in response to Katrina as that of providing support to state and local officials: "The Department of Homeland Security will continue to work with federal, state and local partners to support efforts on the ground in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. We are working tirelessly to make sure that federal resources are being applied where they are needed all across the Gulf" [Federal News Service, 9/1/05]. But on Sept. 2, Chertoff told reporters that the situation had changed and that federal agencies would now take over the primary role: "The fact of the matter is, this set of catastrophes has broken any mold for how you deal with this kind of weather devastation, and so we're going to break the mold in terms of how we respond. The federal government is not going to play merely its customary role in giving all necessary support to first responders. The federal government is going to step up and take a primary role, working with state and locals to deal with the outcome of this tragedy." [National Public Radio, 9/3/05] But Chertoff's Sept. 1 statement ignored the administration's own homeland security response plan, which directed the federal government to act on its own authority to quickly provide assistance and conduct emergency operations following a major catastrophe, pre-empting state and local authorities if necessary. According to DHS' December 2004 National Response Plan (NRP), "catastrophic events," such as what occurred in New Orleans, call for heightened and "proactive" federal involvement to manage the disaster. The response plan listed "guiding principles" to govern the response to these major events. The "Guiding Principles for Proactive Federal Response" make clear that, in these "catastrophic" cases, the federal government will operate independently to provide assistance, rather than simply supporting or cajoling state authorities: The primary mission is to save lives; protect critical infrastructure, property, and the environment; contain the event; and preserve national security. Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude. Identified Federal response resources will deploy and begin necessary operations as required to commence life-safety activities. Notification and full coordination with States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources. States are urged to notify and coordinate with local governments regarding a proactive Federal response. State and local governments are encouraged to conduct collaborative planning with the Federal Government as a part of "steady-state" preparedness for catastrophic incidents." The NRP also says that, when responding to a catastrophic incident, the federal government should start emergency operations even in the absence of clear assessment of the situation. "A detailed and credible common operating picture may not be achievable for 24 to 48 hours (or longer) after the incident," the NRP's "Catastrophic Annex" states. "As a result, response activities must begin without the benefit of a detailed or complete situation and critical needs assessment." A Sept. 5 Los Angeles Times article quoted former FEMA chief of staff Jane Bullock saying that "[t]he moment the president declared a federal disaster [on Aug 29], it became a federal responsibility. ... The federal government took ownership over the response." Moreover, DHS' own website declares that DHS "will assume primary responsibility on March 1st [2005] for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort." 7. Wash. Post, Newsweek, Gingrich falsely claimed that Blanco did not declare a state of emergency In recent days, two news articles falsely reported that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had failed to declare a state of emergency, which had supposedly hampered the federal response. An article in the Sept. 13 edition of Newsweek claimed that "Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco seemed uncertain and sluggish, hesitant to declare martial law or a state of emergency, which would have opened the door to more Pentagon help." Likewise, a Sept. 4 Washington Post article incorrectly claimed that "As of Saturday [sept. 3], Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency," citing an anonymous senior Bush administration official. (The Washington Post's article was later corrected, although Newsweek has yet to correct its article.) Fox News political analyst Newt Gingrich repeated the point on the September 5 O'Reilly Factor, saying, "As you [O'Reilly] point out, the governor [blanco] failed to call the emergency. And initially, it was the governor who had to call an emergency." In fact, as the Post later noted, Blanco declared a state of emergency (PDF) on August 26. 8. Gingrich falsely claimed that Nagin could "have kept water pumped out" of city had he ensured that pumps worked On the Sept. 5 O'Reilly Factor, Gingrich also claimed that if New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin had been able to keep the New Orleans pumps working, the flood waters could have been pumped out of the city. "[F]irst of all, the mayor of New Orleans had a real obligation to make sure the four pumps could work. Three of them didn't. It would have kept water pumped out." In fact, New Orleans has 22 "notoriously fickle" pumping stations, according to an Aug. 31 New York Times article. The Times also reported that, according to Dr. Shea Penland, a coastal geologist, "When the pumping systems are in good shape, it can rain an inch an hour for about four to six hours and the pumps can keep pace. More than that, the city floods." The Times also noted that "[e]fforts to add backup power generators to keep [the pumps] all running during blackouts have been delayed by a lack of federal money." A June 2002 Times-Picayune article, part of a series exploring the probable consequences of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans, indicated that New Orleans' pumps would have been overwhelmed by the rapidly rising floodwaters: Soon waves will start breaking over the levee. "All of a sudden you'll start seeing flowing water. It'll look like a weir, water just pouring over the top," [Louisiana State University engineer Joseph] Suhayda said. The water will flood the lakefront, filling up low-lying areas first, and continue its march south toward the river. There would be no stopping or slowing it; pumping systems would be overwhelmed and submerged in a matter of hours. "Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," Suhayda said. "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." Jeremy Schulman and Raphael Schweber-Koren are members of the research department at Media Matters for America. © 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/25227/

BURN BABY BURN!!!

Beaner.

Bus Drivers’ Rescue Mission - Hijacked by U.S. Military in New Orleans Revolution #016, October 2, 2005, posted at revcom.us With tens of thousands of people trapped in hellish conditions in New Orleans, ninety-four Houston school bus drivers set off on a mission to bring people to safety. They saw that the government had abandoned these people, who were too sick or too poor to get out—or too Black for racist authorities to let out. The drivers loaded their school buses with bottled water and food. If the government couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything, or if some people who should have helped were paralyzed by thinking this was all “god’s will,†then they would help. The drivers were prepared to welcome desperate people onto their buses and in many cases volunteered their time for free. But U.S. military soldiers with automatic weapons, fixed bayonets, and camouflage paint on their faces detained them for hours and then forced them to transport soldiers, supplies, and ammunition. After 31 hours, the drivers returned home—THEIR BUSES EMPTY. This story has not been told. Houston TV stations covered the convoy of buses leaving for New Orleans. But nobody has exposed how the U.S. military hijacked this rescue effort. Now, for the first time, Revolution newspaper brings you the whole story, as told by one of the drivers: ***** When Hurricane Katrina happened, I was trying to figure out the dynamic—it’s a natural disaster but it didn’t have to be that bad. People were sitting there, stuck on their roofs with all that dirty water and nothing being done. We were trying to figure out what was going on. I saw the statement by the RCP and when I went to work, we were all talking and sitting in the day room, having coffee and talking in between shifts. I started going around, talking to people about how this is just horrific. These people can’t be left in this kind of situation with no food or water. And I said, if they really cared about the people down there, what they would do is mobilize all of us with our school buses and go down there and get these people. A lot of people really agreed. Quite a number of people said, “Yeah, we’d be willing to do this for free.†One bus driver said, “Well, I’ve got time, I’m ready to drive the bus, I’m ready to go if they [the school district] will do it.†This started buzzing among the drivers, at this particular bus barn anyway. A bunch of us said to a supervisor, “Look, you need to talk to somebody and tell them that there’s a lot of people willing to go down there in the school buses and bring people back to the shelters here.†This began on Tuesday and I spent several days going around talking to people. Some people were saying, “Well, god works in mysterious ways.†These were people who didn’t want to drive over there. They were blaming the people, saying things like, “Satan is getting rid of the dregs of society,†and I got into arguments with people over that. I said, "This is a natural disaster and it’s made worse by the way society is set up and the fact that the powers that be really don’t care about the people of New Orleans or Black people in general—or people in general for that matter. This is an example of what they think of us. People are over there in water, in filth, hungry and everything else. It has nothing to do with god deciding to pick and choose who’s going to live and die. A number of people know I don’t believe in god, mostly pretty religious people, and I made the point that there is no god anyway. I said, don’t talk that talk to me, because that’s not what the problem is here. Anyway, a large number of people at the barn were saying they would do it and then a supervisor said he would check into it but it would be a very big logistical effort—we’d have to get mechanics willing to go and tire trucks and we’d have to figure out where the buses would fuel up, etc. Another thing I was talking about was: Look it, they have to do this now, they have to close HISD (Houston Inde-pen-dent School District) down for two days and get this rolling now. I said, close the schools, extend the school year for two days or cut the Christmas break short, something. Don’t wait until the weekend to do this because that will mean people down there suffering longer. A supervisor called me into his office on Wednesday and asked me if I’d be willing to drive to New Orleans, and I said absolutely. So he put out a sign-up sheet for volunteers to drive to New Orleans to bring people back and we got 94 people to sign up. A significant portion of them made it really clear that they would do this without getting paid. Like this woman I know wrote on the sign-up sheet, “Don’t have to get paid, will do for free.†People wrote things like that on the sign-up sheet. So everybody was thinking, this is great, we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it. All Geared Up to Go A supervisor called a meeting for anybody who wanted to volunteer. He said: You hear a lot of talk about these people stealing, robbing, doing all these things down there. You hear all these stories about people being raped and all. The fact of the matter is, these are desperate people and they’ve been put into a desperate situation. Everybody needs to think about, when these people see these big yellow school buses driving in, we are going to be their hope, because nobody else is doing anything. I’m not saying nothing bad can happen to us, but most likely it won’t, because we are their ray of hope. If you have a weak stomach, you have to remember, these people haven’t bathed, they haven’t eaten, they’ve been out in the hot sun, they are not gonna be smelling like roses. What you cannot do if you go down there is act like fools, or start gagging, or reaching for a spray bottle. We have to show people there respect. And we’ll deal with what comes up. A few hours later a supervisor announced on the bus radios: “This is on, we’re gonna go, we’re leaving at five o’clock Saturday morning.†This was Thursday, so they didn’t close the schools for us to do this. Everybody was all geared to go. The atmosphere was very exhilarated. People really wanted to do something for these people, like a friend of mine said, “I can’t give money, my electric is about to get turned off, but I can drive the bus and give my time.†People were also very angry over how long people in New Orleans had been left sitting there, and there were some people that were likening it to things that happened in the Civil Rights days. There were a lot of people who were saying that this was about Black people just being written off, that this is the way they’ve always done us. It’s real obvious they don’t care if we live or die. People were really glad we were going, but angry that it took so long to get this together when people were suffering and dying. People had been saying, bring clothes and there was food donated and piled up by the bus barn. But I’m not sure people would have thought about driving the school buses to New Orleans without me going around saying that we should get the school buses and go down there to get people out—creating an atmosphere where people said, yeah, I want to do that. One person said, “This is so much better than just sorting through old clothes. It is important to get people clothes when they don’t have clothes, but this is different.†People really wanted to do something and felt the powers-that-be weren’t doing anything. So when this idea came up people were excited, they were looking forward to it. They were figuring things out. Some people brought food to hand out to people when they got on the buses. A lot of these drivers are single mothers, their ability to maintain is difficult, and they were bringing food, and bags of cookies. One person suggested that we boil a lot of eggs so people would have protein, plus powdered Gatorade. Another person’s husband works for a bottled water company and he talked his supervisor into donating thousands of bottles of water for the buses. There was a lot of initiative being taken by the drivers. But then at a certain point things got taken over by HISD and whoever they were coordinating this effort with [FEMA and Homeland Security]. Fighting to Go Friday afternoon, we were all ready to leave at 4:15 the next morning. There was back and forth on the radio that afternoon, everyone excited about going to New Orleans. Then a supervisor got on the radio and said, “The operation has been cancelled.†Everybody was upset, saying, “How can this be cancelled? People are still down there.†Then another supervisor got on and said we had to clear the airwaves and only discuss HISD business on them. He said, you can ask about the trip to New Orleans when you get back to the barn. When we got back to the barn I went storming into the office and asked why it had been cancelled. I said this is crazy, those people are down there, and I was just yelling. He said look, we were told that since we had 94 buses to go, it wasn’t worth it, because they thought if we didn’t have at least 100 buses leaving it wasn’t worth it. I said, that’s crazy! Tell them to do the math. 94 buses times 60, 65 people on each bus, that’s five to six thousand people. How can they say that’s not worth it! He said, “I agree with you, it’s wrong. In my opinion, this is about extermination of Black people. I’m so upset over this.†Groups of us were standing around and talking and you really got a sense of the anger over this happening. Some people were saying things like, “well, they know best,†or “this is god working,†and others were saying “this is plain old bullshit.†I was fuming. I called up different people. I talked to our neighbors. I was saying this is just an outrage. Saturday afternoon, I got a phone call from one of the other supervisors who said, “Are you still willing to go to New Orleans?†I said yes, and she told me to be there in an hour and a half. At this point FEMA and Homeland Security seemed to be coordinating things. Losing Precious Time Right before we left a supervisor said, this is an historic day that people were volunteering to go to New Orleans to try to make a difference in the lives of these people who were displaced. We got on our buses, escorted by the police, and drove for a couple of hours. In LaFayette, we stopped to refuel the buses and from there we headed to New Orleans, through Baton Rouge. We had to go through a number of checkpoints where they had the National Guard and different Army people. They had different staging areas for the military and they would let a certain number of buses through and the others had to wait. So we’d go through and wait a few miles down the road on the shoulder. This went on for hours. Then we parked the buses on the side of the road near New Orleans somewhere and we sat. When the buses started rolling everybody got all excited because we thought, oh, this is it, we’re going to get the people. But we went to another checkpoint where we sat along the road again. We wasted a lot of precious time actually… Maybe not as many people would have died if there had not been the lack of mobilization once we got there, the lack of caring about all these people, and all that sitting around. Everyone was asking, “When are we going to go get the people?†Finally they moved us out and we went into New Orleans proper. We were driving through and we saw a lot of damage from the hurricane. We saw a lot of trees were blown over, trailer homes toppled over, signs down, roofs off buildings, and electrical wires down. As our caravan went through these areas, some people were coming out and cheering the buses on and waving banners. The people were excited and it brought out the truth of what the supervisor had said, that when people see these big yellow school buses rolling through, we’re going to be their ray of hope. Jacked by the U.S. Army We drove for about 45 minutes through different parts of the area… and by this time it had been four or five hours that we’d been doing this. At one point we saw all these military trucks going by and we saw a flatbed military truck with all these body bags piled on it. Then they had us move to a makeshift army encampment. They had these helicopters and cargo planes and they had cots set up all over the place. There were thousands of Army reserve, and different types of Army people, military trucks, tanks, all that kind of stuff. And they were all walking around carrying M-16’s. There were all kinds of boxes of ammunition. Quite a number of the soldiers had that black smudgy stuff on their cheekbones. Some of them were playing cards. Some of them told us they’d been there for three or four days and done nothing but sleep and play cards and hang out waiting to find out where they were gonna be deployed to. I went over to one of these Reserve guys and said, “Explain to me what your understanding is of what you’re here to accomplish.†He had a gun on his hip and was carrying a rifle and had that stuff on his face. He said, “You see what our badge says? It says to search, rescue, and save.†I said, “If that’s what you really think you’re doing here, you ought to take that black stuff off your face, set your guns down on the ground, and then go through the neighborhood where people have been stranded for days. Because if you and a whole bunch of others looking like you go into these neighborhoods with all this weaponry and stuff, nobody’s going to think you’re there to help them. They’re going to think you’re there to wage war against them, which is in reality what you’re doing. You’re not doing what your badge says. The public will hear on the TV that since you have your shoot-to-kill orders, somebody opened fire on you and you returned it and shot them dead on the street. What people need is help, what they need is for us to go into these places and take them to safety, not all this weaponry.†Two other soldiers were listening to what I was saying, and the guy on the bus with me was part of all this too. He agreed with me, saying, “If I’d slept on the roof of my house for five days, I wouldn’t think you were here to help either. Being Black, Black people are used to standing there looking at the wrong end of that gun.†Some of these Army guys were real assholes. They were gung-ho types who’d been to Iraq, done their share of killing over there. They said to me, “What you don’t understand as a civilian, is that they’re people who’ve been let out of jail, they’re raping, they’re looting the stores.†And at that point I said, “How can you stand here and tell me that if your family were in the same situation, if you saw a store that wasn’t flooded out, that you wouldn’t break a window to go in there to get some food and water for your family. You tell me that you wouldn’t do that in the same situation.†And he said, “You have a point there, you’re right.†I told him, “Well, you need to think about that when you go into these places with your shoot-to-kill orders, if you see people looting.†Sabotaged All this was before we realized that what we were actually there for was to carry military personnel into these neighborhoods on the school buses. One of the other drivers with me all this time said he was learning a lot just from being around me talking to these people. We still thought we were going to pick people up and take them to Little Rock, we were still under that illusion. It was too hot for me on the bus so I stretched out on the ground under the bus. I had brought a blanket and a pillow, and there was a little cross breeze under the bus and I fell asleep there. I woke up hearing this loud voice yelling, “Ma’am, ma’am.†I look up and see five of these army guys with rifles and bayonets on their rifles and their faces all painted up and the first thing that went through my mind was that they were coming to take me away because of the things I’d been talking about. One of the soldiers said, “Have you got your orders yet?†and I said, “I’m not in the military. I don’t take orders from you. I’m an HISD bus driver and my objective here is to get people on this bus and take them to a safe place.†The guy on the bus heard all this and came running out because he felt that something was gonna happen to me for the way I was talking to them. He said to them, “We know what we’re here to do. We’re going to leave in a while and get some people and take them to Arkansas.†Some soldiers then told us we were going to be transporting soldiers into the various wards and parishes of New Orleans and its surrounding areas. I went around talking to people saying, “This is bullshit, I didn’t come to New Orleans to carry them around, so they can do their shoot-to-kill orders. I came here to pick up people and take them to a safe place. We should just refuse to do this.†They had enough aircraft of different kinds that they could have been dropping supplies in, not to mention getting in themselves if they wanted, with food and cases of water. They could have brought medical people into the area with their helicopters. There were a whole lot of things that they could have been doing that they didn’t do. So I was going around saying they can get their own selves around to these different areas if they want, I don’t want to do it. I tried to get people to refuse to do it but people weren’t quite there yet. Some of the sentiment was, well we’re here, they need help, they don’t have buses. I said well what about all these tanks and other things they can use. Some of my friends were telling me to calm down, that I shouldn’t be so angry. I said, no I should be angry over this. There were a small number of people who really agreed with me, who said this isn’t what we came for. But aside from whatever people thought about what we were doing, there were all these guys with weapons all around us. We were in the midst of all that. An hour later, all these soldiers got on our bus. I looked in the rearview mirror, the one where you usually see the children, to see if they’re sitting in their seats. And I see these guys sitting there with all their weapons. We drove through New Orleans—some drivers went to Jefferson Parish, some went to wards in New Orleans. Some buses were filled with rations, some had ammunition. When we got to the staging area we had to hook up with people from other bus barns. That’s where we saw all these Migra [iNS] with their sirens going. There were lots of Migra cars all over this place. We got back to Houston at about 1 o’clock Monday morning, 31 hours after we left, WITH NOBODY ON OUR BUSES.

Lies and Crimes in New Orleans Revolution #016, October 2, 2005, posted at revcom.us Black and poor survivors of Hurricane Katrina are being dispersed around the country, monitored by Homeland Security, channeled into starvation wage jobs, and locked up. The media and authorities are isolating and repressing them and spreading lies to turn people against them. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina there was a steady stream of vicious attacks against the thousands of Black people desperately trying to survive. The news media, high officials, politicians and Bush himself contributed to an ugly, racist atmosphere—with widely propagated horror stories of savage evils and atrocities supposedly carried out by Black victims in New Orleans. While the system abandoned people in desperate circumstances in the Superdome, Fox News and the police pumped out stories of babies being raped, children being murdered, “thugs†terrorizing the people. But the fact is these were all LIES. The New York Times (NYT) and the Guardian, and other papers reported that there is NO PROOF that the story of baby rapes and murder ever happened. David Carr from the NYT wrote that “many of the urban legends that sprang up—the systematic rape of children, the slitting of a 7-year-old’s throat—so far seem to be just that.†(“More Horrible Than Truth: News Reports,†NYT, 9-19-05) Howard Witt, the Southwest bureau chief of The Chicago Tribune, wrote that much of what he had been told, even by public officials, did not check out and he found himself inundated by rumors. Police Chief Eddie Compass said on Oprah, talking about the Superdome: “We had little babies in there, some of the little babies getting raped.†But the night before, he had told The Guardian, “We don’t have any substantiated rapes.†And the churning out of such lies was highly orchestrated. Carr points out that three days after Katrina hit, there was a shift in the Lexus Nexus data base (a clearing house for news and information) where stories focused on rape, murder, mayhem and violence among people trapped in New Orleans. Much, if not most, of such stories were unconfirmed rumors and outright lies. Yet they were repeated again and again. Then there was Bush with his “zero tolerance†for looters and in the first few minutes of his “Speech to the Nation,†his reference to "people left at the mercy of criminals who had no mercy… Barbara chimed in with: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they [black people displaced by the hurricane] all want to stay in Texas…many of the people in arena here, you know, they were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.†Bill O’Reilly on Fox did his part to vilify Black people, saying, “Many, many, many of the poor in New Orleans…they weren’t going to leave no matter what you did. They were drug-addicted. They weren’t going to get turned off from their source. They were thugs, whatever.†And even today, Fox News continues to rant that the “looting†was the major problem in New Orleans after the hurricane. Then you have Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force, saying, “This place is going to look like little Somalia.… We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.†(Army Times, 9-2-05) What happens when Black people are presented as less than human and then Bush announces that “the Department of Homeland Security is registering evacuees who are now in shelters, churches, or private homes.†Ask Brian Murph. When the federal government flew more than 100 victims of Hurricane Katrina to Rhode Island, the state police did criminal background checks on everyone. One of the evacuees, Brian Murph had an outstanding arrest warrant, for larceny and other crimes and was promptly handcuffed and taken away. (Associated Press, 9-23-05) This is not an isolated incident. This is happening in cities across the country with state and local authorities doing background checks on evacuees. Many times checks aren’t made on all evacuees, but just those seeking help from charities—in other words, people who are often Black and poor. The news is now reporting that these checks show that many of the people leaving New Orleans have “criminal recordsâ€â€”which fits right in with the racist efforts to vilify Black victims of the hurricane. Some people hit by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans said they felt like the U.S. government was treating them like the people in Iraq. Well, think back to this true story: One of the lies that paved the way for the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq in 1991 was the story that Iraqi troops who marched into Kuwait had taken 312 babies out of incubators at a Kuwait City hospital and left them on the floor to die. This story was a key piece in the campaign to paint Iraq as totally evil and justify the U.S. invasion. The incubator story was repeated many times by newspapers, TV and radio. But this story was a complete hoax! And by the time the truth came out, the U.S. had brought massive destruction to Iraq with weeks of bombing and killed 200,000 Iraqis. (See, “Wagging the Dogâ€: The Great Incubator Scam of 1990, RW #944) **** The system has been working overtime to vilify the masses of Black people in New Orleans. But the truth is that overwhelming, people’s actions were to help one another. Like the actions of “The Soul Patrol,†a group of about a dozen civilians who organized camps after the hurricane, delivered provisions to people still occupying flooded areas and reportedly rescued hundreds. Or the many Black youth, so-called looters and “thugs,†who were praised by the elderly for gathering food and resources to help large groups in need. There is a vicious agenda behind the racist vigilantism that’s being whipped against Black people. Those white people who have been drawn into this need to wake the fuck up. And those who know the reality of this snare should continue to resist and expose this in every way.

If it was up your ass you would know it.

I'd say it to your face. Correction imbecile. I'm 47 and you say you're 31? You act more like 13. Go back to politicalteen.com. It's more your speed, pedo. Now my questions again since you choose to avoid them.... Are you going to re-enlist and fight this war? Would you let your kids fight this war? Would you let Obby go off to war to fight? You know, since you support this war, you must sign up or shut up..