Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.

Read whole article here.

Timeline of Bush's activities and statements during the Katrina catastrophe

This is really a must-see video.

A challenge to all Bush supporters (if there are any left):
Watch this timeline put together by the guys at the Daily Show and then afterwards, say to yourself "Bush is a president who cares deeply about his country."
You see? It's impossible.

click here

FEMA will send firefighters to NOLA in order to.... hand out flyers!?!?

This is truly unbelievable. This article in the Salt Lake Tribune is telling how FEMA has decided to take about 1000 firefighters from all over the country and train them on how to hand out flyers in NOLA!!!!!

Who the hell is making this up? Think about it. You've got hundreds, maybe thousands of people still stranded in NOLA who desperately need all kinds of help. You've got the mayor of New Orleans pleading on national TV for extra firefighters as his are so exhausted, and FEMA have decided that the available firefighters that the country can send down to the gulf states need to follow courses on sexual harassment and how to hand out flyers! It really does defy belief.

I guess some of the more extreme conspiracy theorists would argue that FEMA is actively trying to sabotage the rescue and relief efforts going on in NOLA in order to just be able to write off that state as ultimately that will be the cheaper solution for the bankrupt USA. I know it sounds wacky but when you read this article, you can actually start to believe that because FEMA's actions are truly so moronic as to border on the surreal.

"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."
Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

Read the article here.

FEMA will prevent Americans from seeing the horror in New Orleans

If this was happening in one of those totalitarian states elsewhere in the world, we would call it illegal censorship aimed at preventing the people from discovering the true ineptitude of their leaders.

To think that this is America in the year 2005. It's just surreal, not to mention frightening in its implications.

Details here.

Chertoff has dodged the bullet himself one too many times.

Michael Chertoff was on Meet the Press last sunday explaining why he didn't think the situation in New Orleans was so desperate and catastrophic:

"I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'"

You mean these headlines Mr Chertoff?

Open letter to Dubya. From a soldier

This letter is powerful. It sums up the complete and utter disdain that the president and his administration have shown for the plight of the hundreds of thousands of ITS OWN CITIZENS caught in the nightmare that has become New Orleans.

Any leader in his position who TRULY cared about his own people would have taken IMMEDIATE and drastic action to prepare for the coming catastrophe.

Bush was incapable of stepping up to the plate for the simple reason that he is incapable of feeling compassion. It might be as simple as that. Forget the fact that he has a low IQ and has about as much leadership in him as a sheep. All he needed to have was true compassion for the people of New Orleans. Then he would have cut short his vacation as soon as he was told that this could be a serious storm, i.e. before it actually hit, and could have appointed a competent person to take complete control of all relief operations.
But no. He just bungled from one disastrous press moment to another, at each step running behind the facts and developments. So obviously unaware of the enormity of this catastrophe.
The only positive thing to come out of this is the fact that many of the people who voted for Bush last year have now woken up to the fact that their president is a true moron.

People are dying, in America, of dehydration, hunger, and disease, because we took too long to respond to an emergency. The US Army can drop a bomb with pinpoint precision overseas within an hour of receiving the mission, and they’re telling me it took our leaders THREE FUCKING DAYS to drop food and water on our own soil?

...Your citizens are dying, and I personally hold you responsible for their lives. As the president, you are a public servant, NOT a king. Your job is to serve the people of the United States of America and to uphold the Constitution, not to preach your Biblical beliefs and to play golf. I’m sorry the hurricane disrupted your vacation. It must be awful for you, but I assure you, it’s far worse for the victims.

Read the whole letter here

New Orleans: the cost of the Iraq war

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

MORE...

How New Orleans was lost

Hurricane Katrina has blatantly exposed the disastrous consequences of the Bush administration's abuse of the national guard. The national guard is supposed to protect the homeland. They exist in order to help in cases of national emergency, in situations precisely like that of hurricane Katrina.

The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconservatives in the Bush administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.

After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.

Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.

MORE...