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Katrina Report from Victor Martinez victorgm@webtv.net;
FLASH: NATIONAL GUARDSMEN 'PLAYED CARDS' AMID NEW ORLEANS CHAOS, RAPINGS, BURNINGS, LOOTING AND STREET SAVAGERY CLAIMS DEPUTY NEW ORLEANS POLICE COMMANDER!
"I UNDERSTAND WHY WE ARE NOT WINNING THE WAR IN IRAQ IF THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE!"
FLASH: 200+ NEW ORLEANS POLICE OFFICERS HAVE WALKED AWAY FROM THEIR JOBS AND 2 HAVE COMMITTED SUICIDE!
FLASH: SURVIVORS DESCRIBE WEEK OF HORROR IN HURRICANE HELL AS BUSH VACATIONED IN SAN DIEGO AND IGNORED THEIR DESPERATE PLEAS FOR HELP FOR 5 DAYS!
FLASH: NEW ORLEANS TO 'SHUT DOWN' FOR 9 MONTHS!
Police Superintendent: "IF I PUT YOU OUT ON THE STREET AND MADE YOU GET INTO GUN BATTLES ALL DAY WITH NO PLACE TO URINATE AND NO PLACE TO DEFECATE, I DON'T THINK YOU WOULD BE TOO HAPPY EITHER!"
"YOU LOOT, I SHOOT!"
NATIONAL GUARDSMEN 'PLAYED CARDS' AMID NEW ORLEANS CHAOS CLAIMS NEW ORLEANS DEPUTY POLICE COMMANDER! Sunday, September 4, 12:58 a.m. ET
A top New Orleans police officer said that National Guard troops SAT AROUND PLAYING CARDS WHILE PEOPLE DIED in the stricken city after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley launched a bitter attack on the federal response to the disaster though he praised the way the evacuation was eventually handled.
His remarks fuelled controversy over the government's handling of events during five days when New Orleans succumbed to lawlessness after Katrina swamped the city's flood defenses. The National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate THE COLLAPSE OF THE CITY's POLICE FORCE.
But Riley said that for the first three days after Monday's storm, which is believed to have KILLED SEVERAL THOUSAND PEOPLE, the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone in trying to rescue people.
"We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance," he told AFP in an interview. Riley went on: "We have been fired on with automatic weapons. We still have some thugs around. My BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT IS WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE NATIONAL GUARD.
"The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in AND WENT TO SLEEP.
"For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I UNDERSTAND WHY WE ARE NOT WINNING THE WAR IN IRAQ IF THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE."
Riley said there is "a semblance of organisation now."
"The military is here and they have done an excellent job with the evacuation" of the tens of thousands of people stranded in the city.
The National Guard commander said the city police force was left with only a third of its pre-storm strength.
"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters in Washington.
"Once that assessment was made ... then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theatre."
On Friday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin denounced the slow federal response as too little, too late, charging that promised troops had not arrived in time.
"Now get off your asses and let's do something and fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country," the mayor said in remarks aired on CNN.
Blum said that since Thursday some 7,000 National Guard and military police had moved into the city. President George W. Bush on Saturday ordered an additional 7,000 active duty and reserve ground troops. Blum said any suggestion that the National Guard had not performed well or was late was a "low blow."
The initial priority of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard forces was disaster relief, not law enforcement, because they expected the police to handle that, he said. The police commander was unable to give a death toll for New Orleans.
"We HAVE BODIES ALL OVER THE CITY. A federal mortuary team was supposed to come in within 24 hours. We haven't seen them. IT IS INHUMANE. This is just NOT America."
Riley said he did not even know how many police remained from a normal force of 1,700.
"Many officers lost their homes or their families and there are many we have not heard from. Some officers could not handle the pressure and left. I don't know if we have 800 or thousands today." ---------------------------------------- © Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. © Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ----------------------------------------
LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS, OVERWHELMED, ARE QUITTING THE POLICE FORCE IN LARGE NUMBERS / OVER 200+ HAVE WALKED AWAY AND 2 HAVE COMMITTED SUICIDE / BUSH's LACK OF A QUICK, TIMELY RESPONSE AND OBSESSION WITH "LIBERATING" IRAQ SEEN AN PRIMARY REASON! – By Joseph B. Treaster, N Y Times Staff Writer, Sunday, September 4, 2005 / Front Page Splash
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 4 – Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers HAVE WALKED AWAY FROM THEIR JOBS and TWO HAVE COMMITTED SUICIDE police officials said Saturday.
Some officers officially told their superiors they were leaving, police officials said. Others worked for a while and then stopped showing up. Still others, for reasons not always clear, never made it in after the storm.
The absences come during a period of extraordinary stress for the New Orleans Police Department. For nearly a week, many of its 1,500 members have had to work around the clock, trying to cope with flooding, an overwhelming crush of refugees, looters and occasional snipers.
P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police, said most of his officers were staying at their posts. But in an unusual note of sympathy for a top police official, he said it was understandable that many were frustrated. He said morale was "not very good" after nearly a week of deprivation and danger.
"If I put you out on the street and made you get into gun battles all day with NO PLACE TO URINATE AND NO PLACE TO DEFECATE, I don't think you would be too happy either," Mr. Compass said in an interview. "Our vehicles can't get any gas. The water in the street is contaminated. My officers are walking around in wet shoes."
Fire Department officials said they did not know of any firefighters who had quit. But they, too, were more sympathetic than critical of emergency workers breaking down under the pressure.
W. J. Riley, the assistant superintendent of police, said there were about 1,200 officers on duty on Saturday. He said the department was not sure how many officers had decided to abandon their posts and how many simply could not get to work. Mr. Riley said some of the officers who left the force "couldn't handle the pressure" and are "certainly not the people we need in this department."
He said, "The others are not here because they lost a spouse, or their family or their home was destroyed or they don't know where their spouse is."
Police officials did not identify the officers who took their lives, one on Saturday and the other the day before. But they said one had been a patrol officer, who a senior officer said "was absolutely outstanding." The other was an aide to Mr. Compass. The superintendent said his aide had lost his home in the hurricane and had been unable to find his family.
Because of the hurricane and the flooding, many police officers and firefighters have been isolated and unable to report for duty. Others evacuated their families and have been unable to get back to New Orleans. Still, some officers simply appear to have given up.
A Baton Rouge police officer said he had a friend on the New Orleans force who told him he threw his badge out a car window in disgust just after fleeing the city into neighboring Jefferson Parish as the hurricane approached. The Baton Rouge officer would not give his name, citing a department policy banning comments to the news media.
The officer said he had also heard of an incident in which two men in a New Orleans police cruiser were stopped in Baton Rouge on suspicion of driving a stolen squad car. The men were, in fact, New Orleans OFFICERS WHO HAD DITCHED THEIR UNIFORMS and were trying to reach a town in north Louisiana, the officer said.
"They were doing everything to get out of New Orleans," he said. "They didn't have the resources to do the job, or a plan, so they left."
The result is an even heavier burden on those who are patrolling the street, rescuing flood victims and trying to fight fires with no running water, no electricity, no reliable telephones and only a small fraction of their patrol cars and fire trucks still operating. Police and fire officials have been begging federal authorities for assistance and criticizing a lack of federal response for several days.
"We need help," said Charles Parent, the superintendent of the Fire Department. Mr. Parent again appealed in an interview on Saturday for replacement fire trucks and radio equipment from federal authorities. And Mr. Compass again appealed for more federal help.
"WHEN I HAVE OFFICERS COMMITTING SUICIDE," Mr. Compass said, "I think we've reached a point when I don't know what more it's going to take to get the attention of those in control of the response."
The National Guard has come under criticism for not moving more quickly into New Orleans to help stem the upheaval. But Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, the head of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters on Saturday that the Guard had not moved in sooner because it had not anticipated the collapse of civilian law enforcement.
"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," General Blum said.
Some patrol officers said morale had been low on the force even before the hurricane. One patrolman said the complaints included understaffing and a lack of equipment.
"We have to use our own shotguns," said the patrolman, who did not want to be identified by name. "This isn't theirs; this is my personal gun."
Another patrol officer said that many of the officers who had quit were younger, inexperienced officers who were overwhelmed by the task. But the stress is clearly getting to most of the officers on the force, especially those who patrol the streets and have found little or no support services, no place to billet and limited radio communications. At dusk on Friday, officers at one precinct in the French Quarter cordoned off the block where their precinct sat and, armed with shotguns, stopped and inspected every car that passed.
"We're not writing tickets anymore," said one officer who pointed a shotgun into a car carrying two newspaper reporters. The journalists were allowed to proceed, but were warned not to pass the checkpoint again.
Both the Police and Fire Departments are being forced to triage the calls they get for help. The firefighters are simply not responding to some fires. In some cases, they cannot get through the flooding. But in others, they decide not to send trucks because they are needed for more serious fires.
"We can't fight every fire the way we did in the past and try to put it out," Superintendent Parent told a group of firefighters on Saturday morning at a promotion ceremony in the Algiers section of New Orleans, a dry area. "We've got to use our resources the best we can."
Even facing much more work than could possibly be handled, he said, it was important for him to take time out for two promotion ceremonies.
"The men need reinforcement," said Mr. Parent, who put on his last clean uniform shirt for the ceremonies elevating 22 officers to the rank of captain. "They need to see their leader and understand that the department is still here and not going to pot." ----------------------------------------- Susan Saulny contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., for this article,and John DeSantis from New Orleans.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company /
************************************************** Subject: *** SPAM *** United States of Shame:Stuff Happens in a Snake Pit ofAnarachy/Chaos!
Part 1: OP-ED PIECE BY N Y TIMES COLUMNIST MAUREEN DOWD ON THE NEW ORLEANS TRAGEDY THAT BUSH FAILED MISERABLY TO RESPOND TO LEAVING NEW ORLEANS A SNAKE PIT OF ANARCHY, CHAOS AND UNTOLD HUMAN MISERY, DESPAIR AND SUFFERING!
Part 2: OP-ED PIECE BY ONLINE FREELANCE JOURNALIST JOLLY ROGER ON THE HURRICANE KATRINA NIGHTMARE AND THE POTENTIAL LONG-TERM RAMIFICATIONS FOR OUR COUNTRY: "Katrina and The Waves"
UNITED STATES OF SHAME: STUFF HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE A 'WARTIME' PRESIDENT MORE CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT's HAPPENING HALF-WAY 'ROUND THE WORLD THAN IN HIS OWN BACKYARD TO HIS OWN FELLOW CITIZENS! – By Maureen Dowd, N Y Times Op-Ed Columnist, Sunday, September 4, 2005
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens. America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.
But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer. Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved.
"You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.
– Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
– Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.
– Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about HALF ITS EQUIPMENT ARE IN IRAQ.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA – a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association – admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center. Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
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? ------------------------------------------ E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company / Click at bottom for "Printer Friendly Version." ------------------------------------------ HURRICANE KATRINA AND THE WAVES
Unless you've been in a cave or on the side of a mountain for the past week, you're already aware of the sad fate being suffered by the great city of New Orleans, and the great people who once lived there.
Natural disasters can strike any of us, at any time, and this is something that all humans accept as part of being an inhabitant of planet earth. There is however, too much surrounding the New Orleans floods and ensuing deaths that may have more to do with someone's nature being disastrous, than it being a natural disaster.
Although a hurricane is a natural phenomenon, it's one that people on the Gulf Coast have always endured and were always prepared for, much as Midwesterners know exactly what to do when a tornado touches down.
The most disturbing part of what happened to New Orleans is that the people were prepared for it, but their means of defending themselves from it were STOLEN FROM THEM AND SENT TO IRAQ. A major flooding of New Orleans was known by our government to be in the top three most likely disasters to strike the United States, but the people of New Orleans were DENIED THE LEVEE REINFORCEMENT their tax dollars had already paid for, and were instead allowed to die.
The event itself was predictable, and also widely predicted. Every death and all the destruction were ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE, but none of it was prevented. Because the levee was never reinforced, the citizens were told to evacuate days before the hurricane hit, but no thought was given to the 100,000 people who didn't have the means to simply jump in their cars and drive away.
It's much like being on a sinking ship, and seeing "Whites Only" written on all the lifeboats.
The means of protecting the city and its people were already bought and paid for, but that money was stolen to support the "war on terror," while stranded people who are trying to survive are described as "looters" by the newspapers. New Orleans was "looted" by the U.S. federal government, not the hungry citizens our government doomed to death, and the U.S. federal government is directly responsible for the carnage that has engulfed that city, not the citizens who fired a few shots in anger.
If I were doomed to die in a sinking city while my loved ones died around me, I might also be a bit angry with the government that stole my means of survival. Matter of fact, I'm well fed, comfortable, and perfectly safe, and I'm getting angry just thinking about it.
You see, another disturbing fact of Katrina is that although the storm has passed, it has CREATED WAVES OF ANGER THAT WILL RIPPLE ACROSS AMERICA for some time to come. The entire nation is now witnessing our government's obvious disregard for the lives of Americans. The unnecessary victims of Katrina float in the streets of New Orleans, while the man responsible for their death strums a guitar. Katrina will force all Americans to re-think the role of government in their lives, and in that regard, the storm is only beginning.
News reports say that helicopters have been fired upon, National Guard troops have been overrun, and many police have turned in their badges. Some reports from New Orleans claim it's perfectly peaceful there, despite all the news of carnage, and although gunfire was reported in the Superdome, reports from two days ago stated that people had to wait four hours to get in there, because they were searching everyone for guns. It's hard to know what to believe, but whatever the situation is in New Orleans, it's the creation of our government, because after causing the disaster, they STOOD IDLY BY WHEN THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SENDING AID.
Soon the TV news will show us all the miracle of martial law for keeping the peace, and just as in the war on crime, and the war on terror, the American people will beg for government protection in exchange for their freedom, or at least the newspapers will report that they're begging for it. Soldiers in our streets will be what most people think is the will of the majority, even though no one wants them there.
It's hard to know what to believe, but regardless of what's reported in the newspapers, the abandoned population of New Orleans will know exactly what's going on there, and they probably won't have the same opinion of martial law that a distant news consumer might.
As I type these words, troops are headed to New Orleans, in an attempt to subjugate people who have already lost everything, and because these troops represent the government that stole everything, they might not be as warmly welcomed as our news industry will claim they are.
We haven't seen the end of Katrina, and her waves might touch your shore, regardless of how far inland you live. The catastrophe that is Katrina may only be the beginning of a much larger one, because Katrina may be THE EVENT THAT SPARKS THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE OF OUR ECONOMY. The dollar continues to drop, and prices continue to rise, and the ever increasing home prices that have kept our economy afloat have finally begun to fall.
Gasoline prices have reached $6/gallon in some places, and this situation may spread. The trucks you're depending on to deliver food to your community may never arrive. Hunger may soon be as rampant across America as it is in New Orleans today, and Katrina's waves of anger will give that hunger an especially bitter taste. There is a possibility that the hunger and violence that began in New Orleans could spread across America like the ripples in a pond, and there will be nothing anyone can do to stop it. You may be prepared to survive a tornado or a hurricane, but very few Americans are ready for the possible ripple effect of Katrina and the waves. ------------------------------------------ – JOLLY ROGER –
"Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men's minds are also injured by them." – Mencius
"There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats." – H.L. Mencken
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