Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos

A federal judge ruled today that graphic pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image. Last year a Republican senator conceded that they contained scenes of "rape and murder" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they included acts that were "blatantly sadistic."

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of certain pictures in a 50-page decision that said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."

Daily Kos: Building the broader movement

Amy Sullivan has an interesting take on the role Choice groups have had in damaging their own cause....

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday"Bush is keeping track of Hurricane Rita as it hits his home state of Texas. That's Bush's worst nightmare: an electric chair with no power."
--Jay Leno

"Hurricane Rita is supposed to make landfall in Texas, which is good for Barbara Bush because she can insult survivors closer to home."
--Bill Maher

"Yesterday President Bush made his fifth visit to the area that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the White House."
--Conan O'Brien

"The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had."
--Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry

"Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, `Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.'"
--David Letterman

Gas Profit Guzzlers

When the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $3.07 recently, it was partly because the nation's refineries were getting an estimated 99 cents on each gallon sold. That was more than three times the amount they earned a year ago when regular unleaded was selling for $1.87.

The companies that pump oil from the ground swept in an additional 47 cents on each gallon, a 46 percent jump over the same period....

Feds are fools

Hundreds of truck drivers from Minnesota, Alabama, Georgia and even Massachusetts have been crisscrossing the country since the beginning of September, moving loads of ice from storage facility to storage facility and earning big bucks from the federal government to do little more than sit in their cabs and not unload their precious cargo.

why distribute donated food when a lucrative contract could be had?

EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americans

Another no-bid contract

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth

Message: I Care About the Black Folks

ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.

The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.

Jailed Reporter Is Distanced From News, Not Elite Visitors

Locked in the Alexandria Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access and precious little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.

But for 30 minutes nearly every day, the world comes to her: A parade of prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, visited Miller between early July, when she was jailed for refusing to be questioned by a federal prosecutor, and Labor Day, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

The future of liberalism in the US

The Death of Environmentalism: Global warming politics in a post-environmental world

Stupid Quotes

25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

White House Briefing

"How this could be -- how the president of the United States could have even less 'situational awareness,' as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century -- is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace."

Noblesse oblige? Not our president

...To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we went to New Orleans with the government we have — replete with its Chertoffs, Brownies, Cheneys and assorted other ideologues, cronies and schemers who gorge on patronage, revel in politics and brush off the mundane responsibilities of the offices they hold. They're Big Picture guys who have brought the same management skills to the Gulf states that they brought to that other gulf....

Simon Schama: Sorry Mr President, Katrina is not 9/11

Slipstreaming behind the annual rituals of sorrow and reverence for 9/11, George W Bush has decreed that, five days later, on the 16th, there is to be a further day of solemnities on which the nation will pray for the unnumbered victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prayers (like vacations) are the default mode for this president who knows how to chuckle and bow the head in the midst of disaster but not, when it counts, how to govern or to command. If you feel the prickly heat of politics, summon a hymn to make it go away; make accountability seem a blasphemy....

Feds Won't Ban Katrina Recovery Photos, Won't Help Either

Challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed on Saturday not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

The government won't, however, permit photographers to join them in boats or helicopters during the mission to recover bodies from flooded homes....

UnFreakingBelievable

[Republican House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Different rules for the rich and powerful

Chief Justice Rehnquist's Drug Habit - The man in full. By Jack Shafer

Senator Bears Witness And Bares Emotions

Landrieu was at once gracious and defiant, thanking the president and then -- in her floor speech -- ridiculing his statement last week that no one "anticipated the breach of the levees."

"Everybody anticipated the breach of the levee, Mr. President," Landrieu said. This included the clay figurine, Mr. Bill, from "Saturday Night Live." Landrieu is a friend of Walter Williams, a native of New Orleans and Mr. Bill's creator, and he had deployed the high-voiced and squishable icon in public service announcements about Louisiana's coastal erosion problems before the storm. "How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?" Landrieu asked in her one hint of a laugh line all day.

No one laughed.

White House Briefing

Late Night Humor: From the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno": "Actually, today, President Bush sent Vice President Dick Cheney to New Orleans. Is that what we need down there? Another person requiring emergency medical help?"

From Jon Stewart on the "Daily Show": "Little observation: When people don't want to play the blame game? They're to blame."

Newsflash: Katrina Wasn't a Hurricane

Leave it to insurance companies to waste no time finding a way to let themselves off the hook. At ConsumerWatchdog.org we are already hearing from Katrina survivors who are being told that their insurance won't cover them because "it was a flood not a hurricane" that caused the damage and they (along with about 60% of folks in New Orleans and the Gulf region) don't have flood insurance.

Nightly News with Brian Williams

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

W's mom touts Astrodome

Former First Lady Barbara Bush was about the most chipper visitor yesterday to the Houston Astrodome, where thousands who fled the Hurricane Katrina disaster are sheltered.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them," the Bush family's matriarch chuckled as she spoke on National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program.

'Wash Post' Runs A Key Katrina Correction

The BushCo personal destruction machine swings into action:

In its Sunday edition, the Washington Post quoted a "senior Bush official" [Karl Rove, hard at work] who said that "as of Saturday [September 3rd, Louisiana Governor] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency." This, of course, was meant to make the governor look foolish and spread the blame around for the disastrous response to the disaster, though it was hard to imagine on what grounds the newspaper would quote an unnamed source in this case. [...Given that a matter of the public record can be easily verified through a little simple research.]

Several hours of blogosphere howling ensued. Later in the day, the Post ran this correction, or rather, 180-degree turn:

"A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26. [Katrina made landfall on August 29.]

Oh, and that other fiasco?

Insurgents Seize Key Town in Iraq: Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led Al Qaeda in Iraq took open control of a key western town at the Syrian border, deploying its guerrilla fighters in the streets and flying Zarqawi's black banner from rooftops, witnesses, residents and others in the city and surrounding villages said.

A sign newly posted at the entrance of Qaim declared, "Welcome to the Islamic Kingdom of Qaim." A statement posted in mosques described Qaim as an "Islamic kingdom liberated from the occupation."...

Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?

...[In the U.S.] National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.

They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.

Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.

It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

'Lies or ignorance'

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington....

Falluja Floods the Superdome

...As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2....

United States of Shame

...It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

'My Pet Goat' -- The Sequel

This time, during a catastrophe, the president did not merely dither for seven minutes, but for three days, and his top advisors followed suit. While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall failure of leadership in this weeks hurricane's disaster, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.

While a rising chorus in the press has taken the White House, FEMA and the Pentagon to task for performing miserably in their response to the human disaster on the Gulf Coast, few have focused on the most telling aspect of the entire failure. It’s not just incompetence. It’s a shameful lack of concern: The 9/11 “My Pet Goat” dithering on an administration-wide scale.

Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action.

While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall deadly failure of leadership, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty....

This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name.

Click on the link and read the whole article, this is a must read!

Bush's New Orleans tour a 'photo-op'

Bush's New Orleans tour a 'photo-op'A Senator from the southern US state of Louisiana has branded President George W Bush's visit to a busted levee in New Orleans a mere photo-op, and slammed his government's response to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy.

Mary Landrieu rebuked Mr Bush for failing to heed her call to name a cabinet-level official to lead the federal response to the hurricane, the one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

"Perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street Levee," said Senator Landrieu, a Democrat.

"Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.

"Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity.

"The desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

"The good and decent people of south-east Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young and old - deserve far better from their national government."

Compassionate Conservative

Hastert: New Orleans "could be bulldozed": It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's 7 feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill....

Hastert, in a transcript supplied by the suburban Chicago newspaper, said there was no question that New Orleans residents would rebuild their city, but noted that federal insurance and other federal aid were involved. "We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness."

Asked whether it made sense to spend billions rebuilding a city that lies below sea level, he replied, "I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me."...

blah, blah, black sheep

The ten most frightening words in the English language?

Wonkette

Rehnquist text message from New Orleans

Black fury at Bush over rescue delay

In an extraordinary outburst during a live television fundraising concert broadcast on America's NBC network, the rapper Kanye West said: 'Bush doesn't care about black people. It's been five days [waiting for help] because most of the people are black. America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. We already realised a lot of the people that could help are at war right now.'

Naturally, his statements critical of Bush was censored by the network.

The Show Didn't Benefit by Censors - Los Angeles Times: AS we enter the celebrity telethon phase of the Katrina tragedy, NBC's "A Concert for Hurricane Relief" stands as a blueprint for its own kind of institutional failure.

By censoring Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West's remarks critical of President Bush during its West Coast feed of the program Friday night, the network violated the most moving and essential moment in an otherwise sterile, self-serving corporate broadcast.

"It would be most unfortunate," the network said in a statement defending its action, "if the efforts of the artists who participated tonight and the generosity of millions of Americans who are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person's opinion."

Excuse me, but whose tragedy is this: NBC's or America's?

NBC may have been nervous about West's comments, including the notion that America and its president are unresponsive to the needs of the poor. But you can be sure those remarks would have been cheered more than anything else in the program by the black parents and children still trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome if they had been able to hear them.

The line NBC stopped us from hearing on the West Coast: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

The puzzling thing is why NBC axed that, but allowed another provocation, potentially more disturbing, to stay in: "We already realized a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way, and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us."

West was apparently referring to the National Guard troops who were sent to New Orleans to help the flood victims and stop the looting.

The show was aired live on the East Coast, where West's full comments were heard.

There was a several-second tape delay, but the person in charge "was instructed to listen for a curse word and didn't realize [West] had gone off script," NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks told Associated Press.

Whether we agree or disagree with West's impassioned riff on media and government racism, the network's relentless self-promotion was by far the more offensive part of the broadcast.

Bush sends marines as flood fury grows

Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, also appealed to Bush to bring home a Louisiana National Guard unit, the 256th Brigade Combat Team, which is serving in Iraq. 'They are urgently needed back home. We have never needed them so much,' she said.

Bush also signed a $10.5 billion emergency aid package for the stricken area. But he is struggling to restore his personal credibility after liberals and conservatives joined forces to criticise the federal relief effort.

Louisiana Senator David Vitter, a Republican, said the federal response had been 'an abject failure'. Attacks on the Bush administration's tardy reaction to the disaster also came from unexpected quarters in the media; even conservative commentators on the usually loyal Fox News channel lambasted the President's performance.

You're on your own, Britain's victims told

British families trapped in New Orleans last night claimed that US authorities had refused to evacuate them as Hurricane Katrina approached the city.

Although assistance was offered to US residents, British nationals were told they would have to fend for themselves. According to those who remain stranded in the stricken city, police had visited hotels and guest houses on the eve of the hurricane offering to evacuate Americans, but not Britons.

The order meant UK holidaymakers without cars were left helpless in the face of the hurricane. Some have been trapped in hotels and guest houses since the hurricane struck at 7am local time last Monday.

One family from Liverpool, trapped in a flooded section of the city, told relatives yesterday of their bewilderment when they realised US citizens would be offered preferential treatment.

Gerrard Scott, 35, spoke to his brother Peter from the Ramada Hotel in New Orleans where he has been stranded without assistance with wife, Sandra, 38, and seven-year-old son Ronan for the past six days. 'Those that didn't fit their criteria were told to help themselves. The police said they were evacuating Americans, and took away the majority.

'The British who were left all thought the police would come back, but nobody has. They have just been left,' said Peter Scott last night. Among the 30 or so people still inside the Ramada Hotel is a woman recovering from breast cancer who had been confined to a hotel room by herself because of fears over her immune system....

Chertoff: 'Katrina scenario did not exist'

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years....

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, 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."

Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one....

Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."

He added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt."

But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.

"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.

Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said.

In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city. (Read: "Times-Picayune" Special Report: Washing away)

Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.

On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years."

"Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood."

Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3."

He added, "These levees will not hold the water back."

But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings....

Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.

"It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before -- a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall -- that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area."

As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.

But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.

Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29.

Thousands Await Help While Feds Shift Blame

Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting,White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials: Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.

President Bush authorized the dispatch of 7,200 active-duty ground troops to the area -- the first major commitment of regular ground forces in the crisis -- and the Pentagon announced that an additional 10,000 National Guard troops will be sent to Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total Guard contingent to about 40,000....

Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible

Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible: A 47-year-old grandmother was rocking a grandchild.

"These people look at us and wonder why we stayed behind," said Carmita Stephens. "Well, would they leave their grandparents and children behind? Look around and say, 'See you later'?" She gave a roll of the eyes behind the raised voice.

"We had one vehicle. A truck. I wanted my family to be together. They all couldn't fit in the truck. We had to decide on leaving family members -- or staying."

She shifted the grandchild in her arms. "I'm living paycheck to paycheck. My mother passed away this year. I was helping take care of her. My real job was as a private-duty caregiver. I had one patient. He died two weeks after my mother passed, on May 6." She calculated that the family made a little more than $2,500 a month -- but that included help from her son Jamel's job. "He's missing now," she added. "So is Eric Stephens, my husband."

They were soon to be Texas-bound. "And I don't even like Texas," she said.

Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible

To those who wonder why so many stayed behind when push came to water's mighty shove here, those who were trapped have a simple explanation: Their nickels and dimes and dollar bills simply didn't add up to stage a quick evacuation mission.

'Me and my wife, we were living paycheck to paycheck, like most everybody else in New Orleans,' Eric Dunbar, 54, said Saturday....

He offered a mini-tutorial in the economic reality of his life.

"I don't own a car. Me and my wife, we travel by bus, public transportation. The most money I ever have on me is $400. And that goes to pay the rent. And that $400 is between me and my wife." Her name is Dorth Dunbar; she was trying to get some rest after days of peril.

Dunbar estimated his annual income to be about $20,000, which comes from doing graphic design work when he can get it. Before the storm, when he and his wife estimated how much money they needed to flee the city, he was saddened by the reality that he could not come up with anywhere near the several thousand dollars he might need for a rental car and airfare.

"If I took my wife out to dinner, it was once a month," he said, sounding as if even those modest good times had come to an abrupt end. "We'd go to Piccadilly's. Never any movies. Really, it's a simple life. I go to work, come home, talk to my wife, go to bed, then back to work again. A basic existence."...

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top: ...DHS [Department fo Homeland Security] did not ask the U.S. military to assist in pre-hurricane evacuation efforts, despite well-known estimates that a major hurricane would cause levees in New Orleans to fail. In an interview, the general charged with operations for the military's Northern Command said such a request to help with the evacuation "did not come our way."

"At the point that we were all watching the evacuation and the clogged Interstate 10 going to the west on Sunday, we were watching the storm very carefully," Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe said. "At that time, it was a Category 5 storm and we knew that it would be among the worst storms to ever hit the United States. . . . I knew there was an excellent chance of flooding."

Others who went out of their way to offer help were turned down, such as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who told reporters his city had offered emergency, medical and technical help as early as last Sunday to FEMA but was turned down. Only a single tank truck was requested, Daley said. Red tape kept the American Ambulance Association from sending 300 emergency vehicles from Florida to the flood zone, according to former senator John Breaux (D-La.) They were told to get permission from the General Services
Administration. "GSA said they had to have FEMA ask for it," Breaux told CNN. "As a result they weren't sent."...

Fish rots from the head down

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top: The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle just such a cataclysmic event.

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.

Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists....

Editorials Slam Federal Response

--San Antonio (Texas) Express News

'On Tuesday, one day after the hurricane struck, Bush delivered a speech on the 60th anniversary of V-J Day, determined to stick to his agenda. Nothing would interrupt his schedule. Not even a catastrophe.

'It was a telling moment. When the country needed a president, it got a politician. There is a big difference. A politician provides rhetoric; a president provides comfort and reassurance....

'Times-Picayune' Calls for Firing of FEMA Chief and Others

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, were going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism....

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

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

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

Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

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

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

...The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week....

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

...The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the officers and troops?...

The Washington Looting of New Orleans

...New Orleans will not be lost forever like Atlantis. Salvaging New Orleans could prove to be a process which fuels the revamping of the corrupted Washington decision-making process. It could spur the salvation of all cities which collectively constitute the core of our modern American civilization. The process must begin with less focus on bread and water looters and more scrutiny of the Washington leadership which has for decades allowed the continuous looting of the federal treasury to enrich the small percentage of the population not dependent on cities....

Bill Clinton, Suck-Up-in-Chief

What the hell was Bill Clinton thinking, standing there next to President Bush and providing verbal cover for the administration's ludicrous claims that the problems plaguing New Orleans were unforeseeable?...

The big disconnect on New Orleans

Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets....

The Rebellion of the Talking Heads

Newscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling. By Jack Shafer

Local Officials Criticize Federal Government Over Response

New York Times: Mr. Compass said the federal government had taken too long to send in the thousands of troops - as well as the supplies, fuel, vehicles, water and food - needed to stabilize his now "very, very tenuous" city.

Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, concurred and he was particularly pungent in his criticism. Asserting that the whole recovery operation had been 'carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days,' he said 'the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security.'

'We are like little birds with our mouths open and you don't have to be very smart to know where to drop the worm,' Colonel Ebbert said. 'It's criminal within the confines of the United States that within one hour of the hurricane they weren't force-feeding us. It's like FEMA has never been to a hurricane.' FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues: New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Wesley Clark

TPMCafe || It all comes back to leadership: "In short leadership is everything we are not getting from this White House. Instead of challenging us to push ourselves to accomplish great things, we get platitudes. We can do better than that."

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes: ...An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

'I don't treat my dog like that,' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.

'You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people,' he added. 'You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here.'

The Independent Weekly: Disaster in the making

This was published on September 22nd, 2004:

The Independent Weekly: Disaster in the making: As FEMA weathers a storm of Bush administration policy and budget changes, protection from natural hazards may be trumped by "homeland security"

Thanks to Josh Marshall

Can you guess when was this written?

I'll give you a hint, it was not in 2005:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV 'storm teams' warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however--the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level--more than eight feet below in places--so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't--yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City.

So much for Bush's lame "no one could have anticipated..." excuse.

And, by the way, isn't Bush's job to plan for contigencies, particularly when it comes to 'protection of the Vaterland'? Oh yeah, he was on v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n.

But then BushCo is on a permanent vacation from reality at all times.