4 Years Ago: "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" She drowned Friday night. Nobody's coming..

[HamdenRice]

Remember Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard breaking down, crying hysterically on Meet the Press?



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/

MR. BROUSSARD: ...that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

MR. RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. President. While you gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.

<end quote>

The context made this even more appalling. Russert had just interviewed Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and had read to him various editorials calling the response a disgrace unfit for a third world country. Chertoff, whose skeletanous face just reeked of his being a zombie who feasted on newly dead souls, had offered one mealy mouthed, but arrogant response after another about how this was the greatest rescue effort of all time -- all lies, blatant lies, that any human being with a radio or television knew to be lies. That was one of the things so remarkable about the Bush administration -- their willingness to lie blatantly to our faces, with only their smirks signalling that they knew they were lying and they knew we knew they were lying -- all the time. Among the lies they piled on after being dumbfounded by Broussard was that he was the liar because he was somewhat mistaken about the exact chronology of this woman's death. 92 year old Eva Rodrigue did indeed drown along with 30 other elderly residents of the nursing home despite her son's several calls asking that the home be evacuated.


Here are some of the other things Broussard said before he broke down:

MR. AARON BROUSSARD: We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. I am personally asking our bipartisan congressional delegation here in Louisiana to immediately begin congressional hearings to find out just what happened here. Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired? And believe me, they need to be fired right away, because we still have weeks to go in this tragedy. We have months to go. We have years to go. And whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chain-sawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership.

It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now. It's so obvious. FEMA needs more congressional funding. It needs more presidential support. It needs to be a Cabinet-level director. It needs to be an independent agency that will be able to fulfill its mission to work in partnership with state and local governments around America. FEMA needs to be empowered to do the things it was created to do. It needs to come somewhere, like New Orleans, with all of its force immediately, without red tape, without bureaucracy, act immediately with common sense and leadership, and save lives. Forget about the property. We can rebuild the property. It's got to be able to come in and save lives.

We need strong leadership at the top of America right now in order to accomplish this and to-- reconstructing FEMA.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Broussard, let me ask--I want to ask--should...

MR. BROUSSARD: You know, just some quick examples...

MR. RUSSERT: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn't the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn't they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?

MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

<end quote>

Incompetence? Bullshit.

[crim son]

1. How awful.

I remember it all and I think, that's when I knew this is no longer the country it once was.

[Louisiana1976]

7. America should never forget Katrina and the federal flood.....

but unfortunately so many Americans seem to have moved on. Even though 4 years after the catastrophe their fellow Americans in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Region are still suffering and struggling to rebuild. I can't move on either because even though I saw the disaster on TV I still flash back to the rescues and the anguish in the Superdome and Convention Center and have read a great deal since then about how Katrina and flood survivors have been faring. It seems now that they've mainly been adandoned by the rest of America--even the Obama Administration hasn't made the Gulf Region a top priority, its lofty campaign promises to the contrary.

[timeforpeace]

56. Don't forget that Bush had to come farther, from Washington, than the mayor or governor.

[MadLinguist]

71. No, the federal response from FEMA on down didnt have to COME from DC.

nationally controlled agencies are supposed act wherever they are needed. That's like saying VA medical care has to come from DC just because some central decisions are made there. I dont think we will ever forget how we were treated. Its as if New Orleans and the Gulf Coast had been unilaterally seceded from the union, by exterior mandate. Gummint? There was none.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

84. IT WAS OUTSOURCED TO THE FOR PROFIT CROWD

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT??????????????????????????????

[Enthusiast]

97. And that is something we

seldom hear in the M$M.

[GreenPartyVoter]

102. Well, they are for-profit too, so it's to be expected.

[Enthusiast]

96. Yup, it was "Bush Country".

And the RWers and cowboy good ol' boys thought it was wonderful.

[lamp_shade]

2. Yuh... I remember it well. Thanks for reminding us.

[jtrockville]

19. I bawled when I saw that live. What an absolute disgrace.

Bush (and his cronies) should have been impeached for dereliction of duty on the spot.

[deminks]

3. Someday it will be shown that Cheney/Bush told

the emergency services including the national guard to stand down, to save the pipelines instead.

IMHO, it is the only explanation.

Timmeh got his marching orders that day to discredit this local official. He even pursued the guy on Imus' show several days later. Guess he didn't do enough on Press the Face for Cheney/Bush's taste.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RC]

8. Cheney/Bush told our Air Defense to stand down on 9/11 also.

Why are they still free?

[Amonester]

79. They R still free because we R told to "look forward" so it will be...

easier to forget the past

I bet there R a few dollars on the line...

[malaise]

4. I'll never forget

Rec

[PCIntern]

6. forget criminal, we need a war-crimes-level tribunal here...

this was genocide, both attempted and successful, on many levels...

[Louisiana1976]

14. Agree 100%-it was genocide.

[barbtries]

9. yes, i'll never forget

it was not incompetence, but something much much more sinister.

[undeterred]

10. I was thinking of this when I read the post

about the doctors who may have euthanized patients. It was total chaos, and people suffered for days without knowing if or when help was coming.

[ellie]

11. No words

It still makes me cry. Those poor people. I called and called the White House. I called and called my senator in Ohio. I told them, the world is watching you! Those people are Americans! It did no good. The repukes could care less.

[Tim01]

12. Americans tried to help. Tried to do what needed to be done.

But government took control and wouldn't let us do what we knew we should be doing.
This business of giving the government control of everything instead of helping our neighbors when we can, is what caused this. And the govt loves having that much control over us.

I organized bunch of individuals who were willing to get on the road. We had a lot of supplies, and we were going to bring boats, I was actually going to BUY a small boat on the way down. We were told the govt would not let us approach the area, and would not accept any supplies from us.

[Louisiana1976]

15. This is a true scandal--how the government not only would not let

Americans help out, but also turned back or squandered aid from overseas. It's as if they were cruelly allowing people in Louisiana to die.

[moriah]

24. Even the "Evil Empire" Wal-Mart tried and was turned down.

I remember hearing from people who worked during the Katrina "war room" that was called up at the WM home office.

It wasn't just getting their stores taken care of. Evacuation procedures are very simple and short -- the same process is designed to be able to be used in fire situations, too, so they have to be. They made contact with as many of their employees as they could, offering places to stay, being a contact-point for employees and their relatives to check in with each other, etc. I know there wasn't just those trucks of water that they had tried to send that that gentleman mentioned that were turned away.

They had prepared something similar for Hurricane Ike, but in that instance they were able to move into business recovery mode a lot quicker and weren't denied access to the area.

[Berry Cool]

27. It wasn't the government taking control. It was the government being totally incompetent.

And then preventing individuals from trying to help.

A decent government could have helped those people AND found a way to use volunteers.

[DKRC]

83. Not incompetent

They achieved what they set out to do. NO was isolated and left to drown because the majority of people down there were the wrong color, wrong political party, and the wrong tax bracket.
The same people with the mindset of OUR oil under Iraq sand were in charge, & looked at NO as OUR prime real estate under those brown people's shacks!

:nuke:

[Enthusiast]

99. I agree, it was not a matter of competency.

If those stranded people were of European origin, or wealthy, the entire resources of the nation would have been mobilized in hours. These people were not Bush's "base".

[Withywindle]

40. That was what really, really made realize we were dealing with true evil here.

It wasn't just incompetence. It wasn't just lassez-faire negligence. FEMA not only wasn't helping, they were STOPPING people from helping.

Chicago was all ready to go. Police, firefighters, medics, Streets & San people, all wanted to go down there, bring supplies and rescue equipment, you name it. We thought it was going to be like the aftermath of 9/11 in New York where people from all over the country came to do what they could and were welcomed (only much bigger and much more help needed.)

No, it wasn't.

[Louisiana1976]

44. Yes. It wasn't just incompetence--it was genocide.

I don't think help would have been prevented from reaching the flood survivors had they mainly been white--but as they'd mainly been people of color, it was as if they'd been told to drop dead.

[knitter4democracy]

74. Michigan was ready, too.

We had all sorts of places for evacuees up here, trailer trucks full of quickly donated supplies, and first responders ready and willing to get down there and help. We were told no and to stand down.

They wanted the Gulf Coast to drown, to die. Those damn Bush people made everyone suffer needlessly and die.

[krabigirl]

60. Yes, so sad.

Interesting that the government at the time which exerted so much control belonged to the party that supposedly hates government intrusion in our lives.

[rucognizant]

63. It is our fault!

For allowing this CORRUPT GOVERNMENT TO STAY IN POWER! I knew good governing for most of my life with a few bad actors..they have metastasized and grabbed the power.'Read Naomi Kleeine's Shock Doctrine AGAIN!
After the Ice Storm of 19989, V P Al Gore was here the following day. People were housed, had their damaged properties/goods replaced..........It was as it should be.
You ALL KNOW WHAT happened in 2000! Some not soon enough!

[1776Forever]

13. This is only ONE of Bush's Admin American Tragedies! How many lives did he throw away

in Iraq and Katrina? I believe in the after life and when he passes I think he and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Woofy will all have to answer to God about this needless lose of life and I hope have to face all those people that needlessly died! How many families has he touched and torn apart with his insane end of the world theories and other fascist thoughts.

Bubble Boy During Katrina





Read this for more incite:

The Katrina Hall of Shame: 4 Years Later, Still Shameful
by Bill in Portland Maine

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/29/774102/-The-Katrina-Hall-of-Shame:-4-Years-Later,-Still-Shameful

Sat Aug 29, 2009 at 01:31:37 PM PDT

It's been four years. It feels like forty.

Below the fold is a reprint of a three-part series I compiled in 2005 called The Hurricane Katrina Hall of Shame. It's a collection of lies, callousness, stupidity, opportunism and spin---some of it jaw-droppingly bad---courtesy of Bush administration officials, cronies, Senators, Congressmembers and pundits over a period of three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit........

The Hurricane Katrina Hall of Shame...

Prologue:

"We’ve already done a lot. Take a good look at what has taken place since 9/11, and I think you’ll be---as a citizen, concerned about your own safety, I think you’ll be pleased."
(8/2/04)

"Of course, we’re doing everything we can to protect America. I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That’s my job."
(10/1/04)

"I’ll continue to act to keep our people safe from harm and our future bright."
(6/18/05)

---President Bush (via Think Progress)

(Much more at the link!)

.................

Sick Sick Sick! This is Georgie Boy's legacy! After hearing Sen. Ted Kennedy's Eulogy yesterday from his friends and family it makes ones head spin to think who will speak when W passes and what will be said about him!

[truth2power]

76. This is one more reason why, as I said in another thread,

Bush's presence was an affront to the sacredness of Kennedy's funeral mass.

[Enthusiast]

101. Bush's presence anywhere

but prison is an affront to the entire nation.

[truth2power]

105. That, too. n/t

[stray cat]

16. This story I think was incorrectly reported as the mother died the previous Mon.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9368952

Many terrible things happened but this story as reported by Broussard got messed up and was incorrect

What happened with Katrina was bad enough - the stories don't need embellished - they tell a tragic enough story when the facts are correct.

[HamdenRice]

18. Depends on what you think "the story" was

For the Republicans, "the story" was the exact timeline of when these conversations took place and when the mother died.

If the story is the Bush administration's criminal refusal to prestage resources in New Orleans, and to evacuate survivors from landfall until the following weekend, Broussard's story is entirely correct.

Even if you want to nit pick the dates, it turns out that Tom Rodrigue, the man Broussard was referring to, did lose his mother, 92 year old Eva Rodrigue because she was not evacuated after her nursing home was flooded.

Tom Rodrigue had called the nursing home staff and St. Bernard emergency coordinators before Katrina hit, and found that no one was coming to evacuate them.

During the week after Katrina, he could not get away to get to his mother because of his duties. He discovered that she drowned on the Friday after Katrina and two days before Broussard went on Meet the Press.

It's obvious from Broussard's comments that the "no one's coming" comment is not just about Eva Rodrigue during the week after Katrina but about the entire city of New Orleans.

As Broussard himself told Russert a few weeks later, when Russert tried to do the Repug's dirty work by alleging Broussard was a liar, Broussard had this to say:

http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a5574.asp

Sir, this gentleman's mother died on that Friday before I came on the show. My own staff came up to me and said what had happened. I had no idea his mother was in the nursing home. It was related to me by my own staff, who had tears in their eyes, what had happened. That's what they told me. I went to that man, who I love very much and respect very much, and he had collapsed like a deck of cards. And I took him and put him in my hospital room with my prayer books and told him to sit there and cry out and pray away and give honor to his mother with his tears and his prayers.

Now, everything that was told to me about the preface of that was told to me by my own employees. Do you think I would interrogate a man whose mother just died and said, "Tommy, I want to know everything about why your mother just died"? The staff, his own staff, told me those words. Sir, that woman is the epitome of abandonment. She was left in that nursing home. She died in that nursing home. Tommy will tell you that he tried to rescue her and could not get her rescued. Tommy could tell you that he sent messages there through the EOC and through, I think, the sheriff's department, "Tell Mama everything's going to be OK. Tell Mama we're coming to get her."

Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week. That was a man's mother whose story, if it is entirely broadcast, will be the epitome of abandonment. It will be the saddest tale you ever heard, a man who was responsible for safekeeping of a half a million people, mother's died in the next parish because she was abandoned there and he can't get to her and he tried to get to her through EOC. He tried to get through the sheriff's office. He tries every way he can to get there. Somebody wants to debate those things? My God, what sick-minded person wants to do that?

What kind of agenda is going on here? Mother Nature doesn't have a political party. Mother Nature can vote a person dead and Mother Nature can vote a community out of existence. But Mother Nature is not playing any political games here. Somebody better wake up. You want to come and live in this community and see the tragedy we're living in? Are you sitting there having your coffee, you're in a place where toilets flush and lights go on and everything's a dream and you pick up your paper and you want to battle ideology and political chess games? Man, get out of my face. Whoever wants to do that, get out of my face.

[justgamma]

28. You're right, but

This man was exhausted. I can't imagine how he felt. A couple of weeks later Russert just had to have him on again so he could play his little game of gotcha'. He badgered him about being a little off on his facts. There was no excuse for the way he was treated by Russert. It was the last time I watched that show. I could not stand to look at his smug face after that.

[Name removed]

57. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

89. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rhett o rick]

58. Why dont you support the public option? nt

[sabrina 1]

78. He didn't get 'messed up'

by not knowing the exact day the abandoned mother of his friend actually died. He got messed up as did the entire country, by the fact that no ever did come until it was too late for, who knows how many people. We never did get an accurate accounting of the dead.

Tim Russert tried to mess him up again, but failed and just looked like an uncaring bully. Nit picking the exact day, to try to distract from the criminally negligent homicide, or maybe I should say, genocide of so many people.

I cannot understand the attitude of people who put more importance on a date than on the crime of allowing so many people to die.

Mr. Broussard was one of the most effective spokespersons for the victims of the Bush administration's neglect during that time. And still, no one has been held accountable. What a disgrace and a slap in the face to those whose loved ones were lost as the world watched in horror.

[Are_grits_groceries]

17. Read "The Great Deluge"

by Douglas Brinkley. He was a professor at Tulane when Katrina hit. It is a detailed account of events.

I could only read it in small doses because it made me so angry.

[Chorophyll]

20. K&R.

I remember.

Has anyone written a general "Heinous Crimes of the Bush Administration" type of book? There are so many that it's hard to keep track. :mad:

[Louisiana1976]

45. "Heinous Crimes of the Bush Administration"--

would make a better encyclopedia than mere book.

[jmowreader]

53. I have a better title

"The Rise and Fall of the GOP Reich."

You've got to set a startpoint for the rise, so we'll say it was the Iranian hostage crisis that put Ronald Reagan in the White House. ("America Held Hostage: Day 352" certainly didn't help matters any.) The fall is the Bush years.

[babylonsister]

21. I remember him so well. What a travesty. nt

[Swamp Rat]

22. This feels like yesterday to me

[NOLALady]

32. Hey Dahlin.

It feels like yesterday to me also.

I have family members who are still in various stages of home repairs.

I had to come to Austin this weekend for a wedding. You wouldn't believe the number of ex New Orleanians who were there. Some had settled in the Austin area, others came in from the Houston area.
BTW, the natives of Austin were proud to tell me that the Nevilles are living in Austin now. They are enjoying our music!

[Triana]

23. Not incompetence. Blatant ethnic cleansing and psychopathy, IMO.

It was INTENTIONAL.

[Berry Cool]

30. I don't know whether that's true or not.

But I do know that at best, nobody cared whether those people lived or died.

What brought it home to me was watching Countdown one night. There was footage of people at the convention center, lined up outside in the heat, chanting "HELP US! HELP US! HELP US!" And there was footage at the end of people away and safe in a Home Depot parking lot somewhere, trying to get the word out that they were OK and safe.

The people at the convention center were black.

The people in the Home Depot parking lot were white.

That was when the bell really rang for me.

It wasn't just a coincidence that the black people were in misery and desperately chanting for help, while the white people were trying to let everyone know they were all right.

Everything had played out so that for the most part, people with means and money got away. People without means and money were left on their own. And even worse, help was prevented from reaching them while people dithered over political crap.

And most of the people with means and money were white, and most of those without were black.

That simple.

[intheflow]

51. Like everything in the Bush Administration,

it comes down to a LIHOP or MIHOP theory. The neglect and gross mismanagement started long before the storm even formed off Africa, when Bush's government cut monies to improve the Federal levees, even though every structural report for a decade previous warned of just such a catastrophe in the event of a Katrina-type storm. That's at least a pretty good LIHOP, and FEMA turning water and fuel away, and turning back evacuees trying to leave the city, and even, perhaps, shooting citizens and blowing up the levees--well, any one of those incidents starts building a case for MIHOP.

Either way, the administration's response demonstrated a psychopathic detachment from human suffering.

[unapatriciated]

68. He was raised without empathy.

this is what mom had to say regarding the Katrina victims.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/07barbara.html

She thought it was "scary" that they might want to stay in Houston because her and poppa bush were thinking of moving there.
But least we forget she has a "beautiful mind"

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0429-11.htm

This is one case that you can put some of the blame on mom.

[truedelphi]

75. Yes, and yes.

It was the first time you even saw the Talking Heads understand that the Bush family might not be that swell group of people - and so nice to sit and have a beer with.

Bastards.

[Chulanowa]

94. it was intentional, but it struck me as more of a "class cleansing"

Moneyed blacks got out of town just as easily as moneyed whites, and poor whites got screwed just like poor blacks. The media coverage was sure as fuck different of course, but the actual conditions were pretty much the same regardless of race - it was class that mattered.

Berry Cool's example above is an example one media distortion. Present the suffering black people as needy and demanding, present the slightly less-put-out white people as cool, collected, and doing just fine. Same difference between "looting" and "finding".

[Berry Cool]

103. No, no, that would be an unfair assessment of what the media did at that time.

I thought the reporter at the Convention Center who appeared on Countdown was wonderful. He was doing his absolute best to make sure these poor people left behind were not forgotten. He was horrified at what he saw going on, and did everything he could to convey that people were dying out there and desperately needed help. He is a hero in my eyes. After all, he was there suffering along with them, just to tell their story.

At the same time, the white people in the Home Depot parking lot were safely away from the disaster, and they really were calm and relieved because they had reason to be. They had their needs taken care of and food and shelter for the time being. They just wanted their friends and family to know they were all right, and the media were doing them a service by allowing them airtime to do that.

What hit me was that the people who were still in desperate need of help were mostly black, and the people who wanted their loved ones to know they were OK were primarily white. This was not "media distortion." This was fact.

[ThatsMyBarack]

25. What if Broussard had a meltdown on a FOX interview?....

No, don't think about that. Too horrid.

I'm just glad Tim Russert was interviewing Broussard instead!

[Berry Cool]

26. I will never forget it. I will never forget how horrible that was.

They were lied to and reassured by people who were deliberately preventing them from getting out or getting what they needed.

[revolution breeze]

29. Went to a Katrina memorial last night

In Slidell which was devastated as Lake Pontchatrain literally rolled into town as 20 foot waves. So many people who are still trying to rebuild but came together to remember what happened that day. An old friend who stayed in his home on the lake (thankfully the house was raised but he was still forced into the attic) looked like he had aged twenty years since the storm. That storm changed so many people I know and love. I will never forget the anguish of not being able to get in touch with my mom and dad who were here and not knowing if they were dead or alive.

[NOLALady]

33. Did your old friend live in Eden Isles?

If so, it's a miracle that he survived. I think Eden Isles was the most devastated area in Slidell.

We live on the West end of Slidell, almost in Lacombe. We didn't leave either. Thankfully, our damage was from the wind and not rising water.

I didn't attend the Memorial because I had to attend a wedding in Austin. But, there were enough Katrina victims at the wedding that I guess it could qualify as a sort of Katrina Memorial.

[revolution breeze]

54. Between Eden Isles and

Ponchartrain Drive. I think the subdivision is Mariner's Cove.

[Kaleva]

31. Katrina was a tragedy decades in the making.

It's easy to find articles and research papers on line warning of the disaster New Orleans would suffer if a major hurricane were to hit the city which were first published long before Katrina.

I read some of them before Katrina, thought them to be interesting and did nothing.

The govt. is reactive and not proactive. It generally won't move unless disaster strikes or if enough citizens demand action be taken.

[omega minimo]

37. Katrina was genocide.

Please don't enable it. Yes the warnings were there. Yes they were ignored.

Please don't ignore the evidence that Bushco. completely failed, delayed and LIHOP when the levees failed and abandoned Americans suffered and died.

[Kaleva]

42. And who enabled this genocide to take place?

That would be the apathetic public.

[omega minimo]

43. It was a test.

We failed.

Your point is understood. With this test, I wouldn't say the apathetic public enabled this genocide (enabled in a active sense) but they enabled the NEXT such occurance by not objecting, not bearing witness, by accepting the official BS that the OP reminds us of...

[Hannah Bell]

47. bullshit. the bush admin did. the people responded with aid; the people

called & faxed when the media started showing the lack of response.

you're full of bs.

[Hannah Bell]

46. the hurricane didn't kill people. the withholding of aid did.

[Kaleva]

48. Many died from the hurricane. Many others died who could...

have been saved had the response been much better.

[Hannah Bell]

52. majority of deaths were post-hurricane, most preventable had normal

emergency policy been followed.

bush admin = murderers.

[Kaleva]

72. There was a plan to use school buses to evacute people

What wasn't planned for though that that many of the people who were to drive the buses had already fled the city.

[Hannah Bell]

73. every bullshit piece of info you bring up is distraction. The bush admin = murderers.

deliberate, cold-blooded.

just learned one of the bush brothers was part of the corporation that sold NO its defective pumps pre-katrina.

just another piece of their murdering history.

[Kaleva]

91. Your info is wrong

The pumps in question were purchased and installed post-Katrina.

"The MSM, including the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, have not covered an independent evaluation recently released by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that there are serious safety and reliability issues with hydraulic pumps that were installed in New Orleans AFTER(emphasis mine) Hurrican Katrina."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/28/773519/-New-Orleans-Pumps-Unsafe-.-.-.-on-Katrina-Anniversary

In 1989, Jeb Bush and Eller (owner of MWI)formed a company called called Bush-El. This company marketed MWI industrial pumps overseas and Jeb Bush traveled to Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia and Malaysia promoting MWI pumps. In 1993, Jeb Bush sold his stake in the company back to Eller.

[Hannah Bell]

111. my error, then. still murderers.

[pitohui]

34. this story caused problems because it wasn't in fact true (she was dead mon, she didn't wait a week)

not surprising since it's mr broussard we're talking about all

it's one of those dan rather/memo type deals -- because he didn't have his facts straight, he ended up looking like an attention-seeking drama queen who was making shit up

whenever this particular example is brought up, it just leans to others pointing out, with the weight of fact on their side, that broussard made up the story so why should he/we be taken seriously...

we who had 504 etc area codes already knew that there were no phone calls going in and out of st. bernard parish, even the fucking SHERIFF of st. bernard parish was not able to make phone calls

i've never understood why broussard told that particular story in that particular way (altho i suspect he was deflecting attention from his own widely criticized behavior because city of kenner workers evacuated instead of manning the water pumps, which caused additional flooding there that wouldn't have otherwise occurred)

what REALLY happened was awful enough: the floodwalls breached, the woman (and many other nursing home residents in st. bernard parish) were drowned within hours with people trying to frantically evacuate those who could be moved in small boats, and families (like the emergency worker in broussard's office) had no WAY to phone or contact anyone in st. bernard parish for many days if not weeks -- the whole story about the phone calls was to put it kindly a confabulation caused by stress or to put it less kindly, the kind of creative re-telling of the truth one expects from city of kenner officials pretty much at any time

FEMA's excuse for not sending help to st. bernard parish was: nobody called us

"nobody called" the fuckwits because there was no way to communicate -- 100 percent of residences in that parish (county) were flooded and most of the other structures as well

broussard could have told the story as it was and it would be more than enough of a comment on FEMA -- by telling the story as he did, he instead gave them a way to excuse and distract from the lack of boats and helicopters supplied to rescue workers there -- the people i knew rescued by outsiders in st. bernard parish were picked up by canadians, some of whom came in without authorization from bush/FEMA because it was the only way to get people off the roofs in time (ex: city of vancouver was able to get helicopters all that way, but FEMA couldn't figure it out!)

[Kaleva]

38. a good post

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

35. I always found this Daily Kos Diary - "They Are Not Coming"

to be quite moving.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/2/104640/1838
They Are Not Coming...A Katrina Diary
by luckydog
Wed Aug 02, 2006 at 09:25:49 AM PDT

[omega minimo]

36. Genocide.

Add to the list of crimes against humanity and country Bushco. will not be held accountable for.

[EFerrari]

39. People point to the story Cynthia repeated about thousands being

killed by government forces as evidence that she's out of touch with reality. SHOOTING people would have been MORE HUMANE than what the government DID and anyone who doesn't get that by now is TRULY out of touch with reality.

[omega minimo]

41. like denial about a lot of things

It may be clung to by those who accepted the televised genocide at the time. I would hope some look with fresh eyes. There is the additional reporting about Blackwater's crimes during that time.

I claim Katrina NOLA was a test of what Americans will accept being perpetrated -- by the government agencies charged with aiding them -- on other Americans in such circumstances. Another fascist regime, another disaster, all bets are off.

Unless someone turns around the policies and agency cultures put in place by Bushco.

[Chulanowa]

93. For some reason, Americans ignore passive massacre

I think it's the whole "bootstrap" meme of our culture.

If armed men take a proactive approach and just gun you and your family down, that's a tragedy, that's terrible, and something must be done about it!
If armed men take a passive approach and simply work to keep you corralled in a foodless, waterless, disease-laden pit... Well, sneak around them, you lazy fuck!

That's how it goes. There's this idea that everyone should be able to magically self-levitate out of adversity, and if they can't, then fuck them.

[butterfly77]

49. I will never forget it..

I cried everyday and got angrier and angrier as I awoke each day and saw the people still suffering and waiting for the lying ass pieces of garbage who called themselves pres and vice..Prosecute! for everything ,stealing,lying,cheating,torturing,etc and most of all destroying the ECONOMY. Prosecute!Prosecute!Prosecute!Prosecute!Prosecute!Prosecute!

By the way I watched Bush yesterday at the funeral and he was smirking and looking angry as he watched Obama and I laughed because I thought about why he thinks he's right and we are wrong and how he and Cheney think they are above the law and I got angry again and all of the memories of his smart alecky ass at those press conferences and how the media were afraid to ask certain questions. Now, as we watch the media they are all to happy to fall over each other to blame Pres.Obama for all of Bush/Cheney fuck ups. I say Prosecute!Investigate!Prosecute!Investigate!

[CTyankee]

66. That story and others like it made me crazy. My own 94 year old mother had just died in late April.

I saw a photo of an old woman, wrapped in a sheet, lying on a baggage carousel at the New Orleans airport where the nursing home and taken the old people. She reminded me of my frail, elderly mother as she lay in her hospital bed and they wanted to take her to a Hospice hospital nearby (this was in Dallas) and she was so frail. I told them that being loaded into an ambulance would kill her right away, she was so delicate. They did the paperwork to get her into the Hospice facility but knew she would die before it went thru. So I was able to see her thru to the end where she was peaceful and death came naturally and gently. Of course, she had morphine and at the end she was not conscious, but she was at least spared a jarring, cruel ambulance ride...

[inna]

50. rec #46 here. UN-believable. thank you, thank you for this thread. nt

[Marr]

55. If a person thinks government is primarily a tool to use against political enemies, and

a means of transferring money from one group to another group-- then that is how they will use it. Conservatives make no secret of the fact that this is their view of government.

[rhett o rick]

59. Rec 55. bush*/cheney should be in prison. nt

[Name removed]

61. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pleah]

62. K&R The entire bushco administration should be charged with murder,

attempted murder ..... and so on.

[blossomstar]

64. I saw this man when he said this and cried.

and cried and cried. That is literally all I could do. I wanted to get in my car and go help these people. I was hearing stories about car loads of people being turned back and not allowed to enter by FEMA! So I cried some more because I was helpless and they needed help. I live on the coast and had been through a flood the year before Katrina hit. I knew that these people's troubles were just beginning after the flood. It is the vultures that come to pick their bones afterward that is the very worst of it. It is hard to believe or even imagine it can happen. But it does. We live in sad times.

[lillypaddle]

65. I remember

I laid awake, night after night, unable to sleep as I pictured the people on roof tops without food, without water. My aunt and uncle and their children were there. My aunt had Alzheimers, but still, they were some of the lucky ones. They were able to get out. Of course they lost everything, a lifetime of memories and possessions hard earned. Yet, they did escape with their lives. Soon after, my uncle Wally died, and Aunt Erma went to a facility for Alzheimer patients. I remember talking to my cousin on the phone - we couldn't really say anything. We could only cry.

I loved New Orleans, I still do. A big part of my heritage is there. My grandfather was French, and he and my grandmother lived there long enough to bring children into the world.

I went to a couple of jazz fesitvals, but never really stayed in too close of contact. It's really beside the point that my own family was there. The horror that those people faced was incredible, and the stuff of my nightmares. My broken dreams were NOTHING compared to the reality that those people faced, the people who lived it, or died with it. It was then that I truly hated George Bush.

I was safe back then, here in Atlanta. And I'd walk into work each day during that awful time, and my co-workers didn't even seem fazed. They didn't understand why I couldn't sleep. They couldn't understand why I was so angry.

Goddamn them. Goddamn them. Goddamn them.

[waiting for hope]

67. Here's soemthing to make you even madder:

VOICES: Expert fired who warned levees would burst

~Snip~

I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:

"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."

On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the state police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.

What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush's boys did not notify the State of the flood to come which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands that remained stranded.

~Snip~

And it marks the end of Dr. van Heerden's career at LSU. They got him. Once the network cameras were turned away from New Orleans, as America and Anderson Cooper shifted attention to Brad and Angelina and other news, the University put an end to Dr. van Heerden. "In 2006 they started the nonsense -- they stopped me from teaching. They tried last year to get faculty to vote me out."

His contract was not renewed; he was forced out too, dumped along with the chief of the Hurricane Center who led the academics who supported van Heerden's research. The Man Who Was Right was fired.

~Snip~

Incompetence? No, it was deliberate.

[deutsey]

69. No surprise considering the anti-gov't fanatics that were in charge

actually believe, as that fascist smiley face Reagan, once said: "Government is the problem."

No, dolts, you morons who are trying to make government so small you can drown it are the problem.

[yawnimawke]

70. Game-plan was genocide.

I think they got away with it...

[garthranzz]

77. What's overlooked is Broussard's negligence...

Many in Jefferson Parish blame him for the East Bank flooding, because he evacuated the pump operators, one of whom was his wife. This was contrary to standard operating procedure. He panicked. He had to work very hard to rehabilitate his reputation. Something Blanco was unable to do, because BushCo went gunning for her.

btw, the best book on Katrina, imho, is Jed Horne's Breach of Faith. And Greg Palast's documentary must be seen.

[bertman]

80. Recommend highly. While the Justice Department is having investigations I'd like to see

someone investigate WHO ordered the relief vehicles to be turned away, WHO shut down the fuel distribution, and WHO gave the order to cut the emergency communication lines.

We need to know who the incompetent or treacherous bastards were who ordered these things. There would probably never be any prosecutions but holding these despicable pieces of shit up to public ridicule would be the first step to getting some minor jot of justice out of this criminal enterprise that was called Katrina relief.

Let's remind Americans once again how BushCo treated Americans who were in dire straits.

My wife's family is from New Orleans and many of them were devastated by Katrina, including an elderly aunt who died in one of those nursing homes. The stories they tell are just like the ones Mr. Broussard was telling. This makes me so fucking angry.

[JackDragna]

81. I worked with Katrina refugees...

..who came here to Baton Rouge. To this day, I am chilled by their stories, not just of the horrors of natural disaster, but of the disaster that lethargy, callousness and incompetence caused. It is a crime no one sits in prison for what happened during those weeks after the storm.

[defendandprotect]

82. What happened in NO with Katrina could be our future if we don't start . . .

reversing this fascism --

and corruption of our government --

[Hannah Bell]

87. bush pretty well said it *was* our future, didn't he? i remember his initial line

on the storm was something like "you can't expect the federal government to help much with these local things".

until he started getting mass flak.

most people still think serious disaster relief is a *prime* responsibility of the feds.

[Rhiannon12866]

85. K&R. Yes, I remember this... We should never forget.

;(

[Chulanowa]

86. It was one of those "Where were you when...?" moments

And it's weird how it's something between vivid memory and dream-haze. Between staying up all night for more than one night calling relatives and friends, watching the news, and blood I gave (along with more money than I could afford) I suppose that explains the weird sort of delirium.

I can only imagine the sort of state of mind the people who lived through it.

Katrina was a wake-up point for me. At the time I was active on a right-wind forum. Not Freerepublic, but one of its kissing cousins. I acted as a "lone liberal voice" there, trying to argue position and policy rationally. I figured it was possible. After all, when it comes down to it, we're all Americans right, we're all playing on the same team. Sure you think the iraq war is good and I don't, but we can work past that, right?

And then Katrina hit. And the fucking filthy shits cheered. I could have family members floating in the streets (luckily I didn't), and they were cheering - someone's family was floating, and they fucking cheered. Fake stories of cannibalism in the superdome broke, and the place turned into a den of gloat over their racial and moral superiority over the "welfare queens." They complained about refugees - they called them "immigrants" the fuckers - being relocated to other states. FEMA flopped and wallowed and they thought it was great - Don't spend their tax dollars. People put demands to raze the entire city into their signature lines.

I didn't realize it at first. But now I know. These aren't "fringe". Those people are what makes the core of the Republican party, and even a portion of our own party's conservative side. They cannot be spoken with. They cannot be reasoned with. There is no "coming to terms" and "overcoming our differences." These are people who were pleased with the sight of dead bodies floating in sewage puddles in New Orleans, who crowed about their own greatness in the face of elderly women gasping in heat stroke.

I do not believe that the levees were broken intentionally. But I saw very clearly that this was an attempt to destroy the city of New Orleans, and that this goal was political in nature. Everything after the storm was orchestrated to destroy the city, to kill or drive out the poor, and try to rebuild it in a form acceptable to the conservatives. If the flooding was intentional, I wouldn't be surprised.

Katrina taught me that these people aren't my opponents. They are my enemy. They want me dead. They want my family dead. They want you dead. This is what htye take pleasure in, death and destruction. From Katrina, I learned that there is no hope of reconciliation or bipartisanship, that the only viable path for America is to walk over them and leave them sitting outside in the rain.. .and wait for them to start floating.

Fuck them.

[HamdenRice]

92. Wow

I met one guy in a bar around then who started on the "looters" meme, but I shut him up real fast. It's amazing to hear what they were saying when it was just them.

Monsters.

[EFerrari]

109. I agree with every word of that.

:hug:
:grouphug:

[rambler_american]

88. This WILL soon be forgotten

It will never get into the history books because the history books will not have anything in them that makes the rightwingnuts look bad.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6581189.html

AUSTIN — Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks.

And the side that got left out is very unhappy.

As it stands, students would get “one-sided, right wing ideology,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the House Mexican American Caucus.

And Texas controls the textbooks for all of the USA so your kids and my grandson will probably never know about the atrocities of the * administration.
The unspeakable bastards will never be held accountable and history will probably be kind to them.

:mad: :grr:

[rambler_american]

90. asdf

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."
-George Orwell

[txwhitedove]

95. I remember...

[IrateCitizen]

98. A glaring example of the "Shock Doctrine" at work...

I would suggest that anyone, everyone, read Naomi Klein's description of Katrina in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It explains why there was such willful incompetence in a reasoned way, laying out a damning case by simply presenting the facts.

FEMA's response to Katrina was not simple incompetence. It was part of a concerted effort to turn New Orleans into a tabula rasa, or blank slate, upon which they could rebuild it as a corporatist utopia. For evidence, she cites what they did to the housing projects, the school system, and the complete failure to divert any resources to rebuilding the ninth ward -- even several years after the hurricane.

But don't take my word for it. Read Klein's book, and prepare to be stunned and angered.

[VOX]

106. Absolutely spot-on. Sadly, chaos and destruction are lucrative, as seen in Iraq...

In Iraq and New Orleans as well, huge no-bid contracts were given to contractors with strong ties to the Bush administration. Why more people don't get this, I'll never know.

[Barack_America]

100. How could anybody ever forget that story?

Ever?

I still get a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about it.

[LeftHander]

104. "Row, row, row your boat....gently down the stream.....hehe nice guitar."

[Uncle Joe]

107. Kicked but too late to recommend.

Thanks for the thread, HamdenRice.

[catzies]

108. Never forget. Never ever ever forget.

I know I can't. :cry:

[Sheltiemama]

110. I remember him.

It's still heartbreaking to read.

[Jakes Progress]

112. That any American voted republican is a black mark

on the country. How could such stupid, mindless, selfish jack asses actually walk among us.

We are to be shamed that bush and his crowd aren't in jail right now.

[misanthrope]

113. Everyone is missing something more important from the transcripts...

...Broussard was sandwiched between two Bushies: DHS head Michael and former RNC Chair/current Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour. Read where neo-con enabler Russert talks to grotesque man-pig Barbour right after Broussard. Barbour goes straight into a spiel about how wonderful the federal forces had been to them, how immediate and thorough their response was, even casually dismissing whatever reports might be coming out of Louisiana.

Why the discrepancy? Was it merely spin from Barbour to make his buddies look good? Was it part of a plan to discredit La. Gov. Blanco, a Dem? Was the response actually better in Mississippi because they are a more conservative state?

And as far as Chertoff's claims that the nation had never seen something like this, he's full of crap. Just the year before, a succession of storms came ashore in the South and the response was different.

Look at what I saw on a blog earlier tonight from someone who lives on the Gulf Coast:
"For further clarification: In the 2004 hurricane season, Florida was dealt a bad hand.

Aug. 13- Category 4 Hurricane Frances made landfall at Punta Gorda, FL, near Tampa, and moved northeast across the state.
Sept. 5- Category 2 Frances made landfall on the Atlantic Coast side of Florida, moved across and entered the Gulf only to turn northward and rake the Florida Panhandle.
Sept. 16- Category 5 Ivan made landfall near the Alabama-Florida state line where the worst portion of the storm socked Pensacola and the surrounding area.
Sept. 25- Category 3 Jeanne made landfall almost exactly where Frances struck weeks earlier.

In the days before and after these storms, it was common for travelers on the interstate highways in the region to see caravans of power trucks, military vehicles and various other emergency response groups heading into the area. From identifying marks on the vehicles, it was obvious they had been mobilized from around the nation and were moved into staging areas, so they could spring into action as soon as the weather allowed.

Why was this type response seen then but a year later it was bungled?

In my opinion, it was three factors. One, Florida had an active Republican party that had displayed success in recent elections. Two, one of those victories was in placing the POTUS' brother, Jeb Bush, at Governor's slot. Three, 2004 was an election year and Florida was predicted to once again prove vital in a tightly contested race.

I can find little other reason for such vast discrepancy on the part of the federal response between that year and the Katrina fiasco."

FEMA was capable of handling this a year earlier, why couldn't they in 2005? It makes no sense.

And anyway you cut this, the GOP used Katrina as a political football, through and through.