Appalling. The autopsy on Bush's response to Katrina.

[icarus]

The response to hurricane Katrina shows a region of devastation where aid was and is being consistently turned away by the federal government.

Why?

Red Cross was prevented from going in to NOLA by the federal government, and has been asked by Homeland Security not to come back, apparently in the theory that bad conditions will force people to leave the city (source: the Red Cross web site).

Yet at the same time Transportation out of the city was not being provided.

New Mexico National Guard was ready to move in to help before Katrina, but delayed until Thursday by Bush administration. (Source: Yahoo News.)

FEMA director lied and told CNN that he didn't know about the people stranded in the New Orleans Convention Center until Thursday. In the same report we have Mayor Nagin's vivid demand for help. (Source: CNN News.)

The governor of Louisiana formally requested aid for Katrina immediately, on August 28th, listing needs for military personnel and $5 million for evacuation. (Source: State of LA official disaster relief request form.)

She follows it up on September 2nd, this time in a public letter to the president. (Source: State of LA Press Release.)

ABC casts doubt on claims of shots fired at rescue helicopters. 'At the Superdome, we have a report that one shot was fired at a Chinook helicopter,' Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said, adding that the Chinook is 'an extremely large aircraft.' Elsewhere there were no reports of any firing on rescue efforts. (Source: ABC News.)

New Orleans is easy to reach, reporters were there -- why was there no aid? (Source: Karen Wehrstein's blog.)

Military ready to deliver aid, but delayed by Bush's orders. (Original Source: BBC World News story.)

Vancouver Canada help is held up with no explanation. (Source: CTV News.)

Canadian Prime Minister's offer of help still put off on Thursday September 1st as we were 'still analyzing' the need. (Source: Yahoo News.)

Russian offer of help ignored (Russia has the largest airlift capacity in the world). (Source: Yahoo News.)

Florida airboat volunteers, who've stocked their boats with supplies from their own funds, are turned down. (Source: the Florida Sun-Sentinel.)

Florida airboat rescuers email CNN that they're told by FEMA that they'll have to pay their own gas to NOLA when 'The cost of gasoline for that air boat, for each day, amounts to approximately $550.00 per day, minimum. With the current gasoline crisis, it could cost considerably more, up to $600 - $700 per day.'.

Al Gore offered airplanes and was refused (source: CNN) because he was going to evacuate a private hospital not a public one.

Mayor of Chicago Richard Daley offered 36 firefighters and technical rescue teams, 8 emergency medical techs, search-and-rescue equipment, 100 police officers, 2 boats, a mobile clinic and 140 streets and sanitation workers with 29 trucks. All self sufficient. The FEMA response? 'just send one truck.' (source: The Chicago Daily Sun.)

1,000 volunteers with 500 boats are told they can't conduct 'renegade' rescue operations.



What the hell is going on? Bush could not have more effectively kept aid out of the region if he'd cordoned it off with armed guards.

ETA: Where was Bush? Stephanie provides his detailed itinerary with press photos.

selkielass provides this hilarious photo of Bush playing guitar at a fundraiser during the crisis.

Thank you to Karen Wehrstein for the majority of the links and kagyakusha for the Canadian aid link.

Comments

[noblerot.livejournal.com]

My God, it just gets worse and worse.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I am quietly staggered at the moment.

Icarus

[rockcandy.livejournal.com]

I am completely mind-blown. I have little to no clue as to what's even going on in my country. Would you mind if I linked to your post on my lj?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Please do link it. I appreciate your getting the word out.

Icarus

[wenelda.livejournal.com]

probably because a majority of the people stuck there are poor and african-american, so of course they deserve what they got and it was god's will.

i. hate. bush.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That's one of the first things I thought when I saw that all those people at the Dome were black: "that's why they're not getting help." Bush values their lives less.

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

One of the photos I've seen out of NO was an aerial shot of a buidling surrounded by water. Five or six black people were standing on the roof, and they'd spray-painted HELP on the ground; two of them were trying to flag down helicopters by waving American flags.

And the feds abandoned them, and the rest of their city.

[dphearson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post mortem; it's humialiting and utterly digusting.

I am a deeply chauvinistic American; my parents were immigrants to this country and both were from biracial/dual ethnic backgrounds. They suffered so much so that I- and others- could have chance. To see this is hurts ever so deeply- and reminds me that lot of work needs to be done in this country.

[dorkdance.livejournal.com]

I found this through lettaque.

I keep wondering what it'll take for Europe and Britain to storm our shores and our skies, declaring that the US government has mismanaged itself and its citizens for long enough, and they're taking us back. Because clearly, creating a scene out of Hotel Rwanda and showing it on every news station in the country isn't enough.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you've seen this (http://www.zippyvideos.com/5608100891049646/broussardonmtp/) yet, but it's, um, a little disturbing. Interview. President of a group in NOLA. Yeah. Yeah.

[ahina-gold.livejournal.com]

Oh God. Disturbing doesn't begin to cover that.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And everyone going on about this happening in a first-world country. Until now, I've been loath to truly compare Bush and his cronies to Hitler and the SS, but, well, Germany's a first-world country, and it damned its own "undesirables" to death in reprehensible conditions while the army went elsewhere to fight "the enemy." New Orleans was never meant to be a death camp.

[sarspasm.livejournal.com]

Mike Brown should be charged with treason. And some degree of murder. Fucker.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it won't happen. If everyone who fucked this situation so thoroughly were charged with murder and treason, it would be a Nuremberg trial. "I was only following orders."

Elvis fuck. I've been scared shitless of Naziism since I was a kid, ever since I first learned about the camps. That it's happening here on a so-far-smaller but still government-sanctioned scale is quite honestly my worst nightmare unfolding as I watch.

[sarspasm.livejournal.com]

They'll dump it on underlings, provided they answer accusations at all (this is W & co, after all). My only hope is the livid press corps. Apparently, Sheppard Smith wigged out on Hannity and Comes.

I've wept over this. It's a national disgrace and one of the biggest fucking tragedies I've ever seen.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Damn. For some reason it won't play for me.

Icarus

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Go look on bookshop's journal. (I think the post is f-locked, but it's got loads of links to all sorts of HK-related sites.) There's a transcript in the comments, near the top of the list. The transcript isn't quite the same as the actual video, but....

The President of Jefferson Parish should not have to break down sobbing in agony and the knowledge that he and his people have been left to die.

[setissma.livejournal.com]

As an interesting note, I was just talking to my grandmother on the phone, and she lives in Rochester, MN, home of the Mayo Clinic. In government plans - Department of Homeland Security, basically - the Mayo Clinic is considered the 'base' for a terrorist attack or disaster for a great many large cities, from St. Louis to Chicago and so on. If something were to happen, victims would be flown there - they have the resources to handle it. On top of having the resources to handle it, they have fully trained teams of physicians, part of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team. They're federally trained to respond to disasters just such as this one. They've got training and means and funding and they're pretty much begging to go and help, and here's the catch - the federal government refuses to allow them to go to NOLA or the surrounding area. I can't find a link to a reliable news source, but according to my grandmother, it was on the first page of the Rochester News. Way to go, guys, way to go.

[sarspasm.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Also, I don't have the link, but while W. took his photo op tour photo op around the disaster area in NOLA food and water convoys were halted for his visit. (got here through dphearson, btw)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

They stopped convoys, banned all helicopter flights as long as he was in the state, and created a Potemkin village for his photo op, one which was immediately torn down after he and the press left. This is according to ZDF, the German broadcasting company, who stuck around long enough to tell the world.

[sarspasm.livejournal.com]

Oh, Christ. You have a link for that? I'm so going to forward it to CNN.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Holy... that's incredible. Link?

Icarus

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/22494/85287

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Also http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/201754/2484

[sarspasm.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* On a national level. Shit. Just...shit. That's a new low for them, and that's saying something.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

This is ARD, not ZDF, but this is a German reporter's commentary. She says it's "unglaublich" (unbelievable).

http://www.tagesschau.de/video/0,1315,OID4700936_RESreal256_PLYinternal_NAV_BAB,00.html

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Even worse... no, not worse. Just adding insult to injury -- my boyfriend and I just heard on national news that Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton has been contracted to repair three power plants in the area.

Yep. The same Halliburton that was taking oil that they were buying for 17 cents a gallon and charging the US government a ridiculous amount to supply it to Iraq.

The corruption boggles the mind.

Icarus

[sarspasm.livejournal.com]

Saw it on the blogs last night. It's just devastating, honestly. I never thought the callousness of Bush & Co. would extend this far.

What makes it worse are the cries in the overseas communities saying we "deserved" it- no shit environmental degraedation has played a huge role, but could they be more sensitive about it? No one should die, but Michaels Brown & Chertoff should be tarred and feathered.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I can't say I didn't expect it, nor can I (entirely) blame them. I knew our asinine foreign policies were gonna bite us in the ass big time at some point.

It's not like we had a lot of credibility to lose, but...ouch.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. My long posting this afternoon was largely inspired by a German friend of mine on LJ who took that attitude -- and started salting the blame around, why blame Bush, doesn't the governor and the mayor of New Orleans have any responsibility?

Un-fucking-believable.

Of course there's nothing I loathe more than watching my tax dollars go to start a war in Iraq, but do the poor deserve to die anywhere? What the Fuck is wrong with people?

Icarus


Icarus

[fourth-moon.livejournal.com]

Please.

"I would never have whished for so much suffering, but now I would wish that it wasn't for nothing."

_Not_ "oh goody, those people in NO deserved to die anyway for living in the US". But: I don't want 300 000 humans to die, and one month later it's business as usual and nothing changes - until the next disaster strikes.

I'm sorry that my assumption that security measurements and evacuation are normally in the hands of the governer of the affected state is being interpreted as "salting the blame". I'm afraid that the way disasters are dealt with in the US, and which agency is responsible for what, is not common knowledge for me - most of my friends expected the state governors to be questioned about early measurements, too.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. I'm on a quilters list with a lot of Southern members, and it's becoming increasingly hard to bit my tongue over comments like "the hard-working folks who left town are all right, but ones who stayed looked like they're from the projects," or "it's not nearly as bad as they say it is," or "they should have left town." The unconscious racism is damn near giving me nosebleeds.

[abigail89.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this enormously informative entry. I've followed the links and printed out many of the stories. Believe me, it'll get around.

[jaig.livejournal.com]

That's disgusting and unbelievable for the government to do. Just- WHAT?

[tigerlilly2063.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I saw in a report that there were people who tried to help with their private boats to get people out of afloat zones. But they were mostly stopped by the police/military(?) because they couldn't handle the private rescuers or thought they wanted to pillage. *shakes head*

[xikum.livejournal.com]

I am simply still in shock, reading the Government response to those in need after the tragedy. The only good thing to come of this, if people are finally willing to see it, is that now, finally, there is a very clear a sign of the 'rich vs. poor' mentality, and the lie of the Republicans that they are the 'moral' ones. Right. 'Right to Life' apparently extends only to prevent abortion--but then they can die gruesomely. And hey, don't expect them to even allow those to help who would, much less themselves actually take timely action to help others live, by, say, giving water to a dying child...
Barbara Bush---the wife of a previous president and mother of our current president, reportedly had this to say:

Here's the link:
http://steverose.dailykos.com/

Here's the quote:
by DavidNYC
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 17:09:32 PDT
Barbara Bush - the woman whom no less an authority than Dick Nixon said "knows how to hate," the woman who didn't want to trouble her "beautiful mind" with thoughts of "body bags and deaths" - has now offered us yet another gem. After visiting refugees staying at the Houston Astrodome, she had this to say:

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckled slightly)--this is working very well for them."

What a cold, callous, wretched ghoul of a person. I just don't even know what else to say.


Neither do I. I am still so very much in shock, I can't think straight.

[xikum.livejournal.com]

Icarus, Thank you so much for all the work you did, putting this post together with all the links!

[xikum.livejournal.com]

I hope it's OK with you? Let me know if not---I posted a link to your post at my LJ.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Go for it. Karen Wehrstein gets the credit for collecting all but three of the links though. I just wanted to present the information without supplying a theory or context. Just to... see it.

Icarus

[auctasinistra.livejournal.com]

My head's been exploding with fury every single day since this happened; I'm not sure whether to thank you for giving me even more to be outraged about. ;) But how much do you want to bet in about a month the media will be bored with this, the government will have pretended it was the White Knight, and the rest of the country will fall back into our usual apathy about injustices that don't affect us personally? (Cynical? Moi?)
But I am grateful that the voices of outrage are loud and numerous.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Canadian Blood Services offered blood to help out, they were refused.

You won't find any official statements about it, but I work there so word gets around.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Unbelievable. And now Bush is saying that this is the responsibility of state and local authorities. Because, yo, buses work real good in a flood (and they gloss over the, oh, military ship that was parked right behind the storm, ready to go).

If the state and local governments are in charge of leading our country during a disaster -- what do we need a president for?

Icarus