BushCo. Nukes New Orleans

BushCo. Nukes New Orleans

Crimes of the State

 

"What didn't go right?"

-'Commander-in-Chief' George
W. Bush

to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, 9-7-05, AP

 

(Revised October 3rd 2005)

This is the true story of the deliberate and premeditated
murder of the great city of New Orleans and of many of its poverty-stricken
inhabitants:

 

1. The Setup

"FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans
was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. [in a 2001 report]
But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent..."


-Sidney
Blumenthal, "No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

 

"Federal flood control spending for southeastern
Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005,
according to budget documents. Federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain
vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million
in 2002 to $5.7 million this year. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu
requested $27 million this year."

-Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina, disaster experts say, By Seth
Borenstein, Knight
Ridder Newspapers

 

"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 (...) The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking.
Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise
them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement (...) The problem that we
have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up
so that we can't raise them."

-June 8, 2004, Walter
Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana

 

"In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a
significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane
protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials
say they need."

-Newhouse News Service; Will Bunch Philadelphia
Daily News

 

""Among emergency specialists, "mitigation"--the
measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters--is
a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs. But since
2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years,
have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation
program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright.
Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people
and property from the next disaster has been cut in half..."

-Disaster in the Making , JON
ELLISTON

 

"In 2002 the [Army Corps of Engineers'] chief resigned,
reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's
proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending."

-Paul
Krugman, The New York Times

 

"The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity
Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains
about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager.
That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations
on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles
and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9
million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we
sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts
that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should
be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million.
And we're going to have to pay them interest."

-Feb. 16, 2004, New Orleans CityBusiness

 

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the
levees."

-President (sic) George W. Bush

 

"On August 15, just two weeks before Katrina slammed
into the U.S., the Pentagon boasted of spending $6.4 billion — so far
— on 2,705 Corps of Engineers construction projects in Iraq, all but
200 of them started since June 2004. Much of the work to repair, replace,
or build dams, berms, levees, power plants, police stations, hospitals, port
facilities, oil pipelines, and so on, as I've noted, have been undertaken
to repair damage we caused by our reckless invasion. More than 1,588 projects,
valued at $1.6 billion, have been completed."

-Rotten
to the Corps In New Orleans, that is, while money for Corps of Engineers water
projects floods into Iraq, The Village Voice, The Bush Beat by Ward Harkavy,
9-03-05

2. The 2nd Crime: FEMA Actively Blocks Relief
Aid From Arriving

"The government -- which could have and should have
provided water and food to residents of New Orleans -- has not done so intentionally
to force people to evacuate by starving them out. This is a crime of the gravest
sort.

"We need to understand that the capability has been
there from the start to drive water and food right up to the convention center,
as those roads have been clear -- it's how the National Guard drove into the
city.

"On Wednesday a number of Greens tried to bring a
large amount of water to the SuperDome. They were prevented from doing so,
as have many others. Why have food and water been blocked from reaching tens
of thousands of poor people?

"They even refused to allow voluntary workers who
had rescued over 1,000 people in boats over the previous days to continue
on Thursday (...) and had to be "convinced" at gunpoint to "cease
and desist. (...) There is something sinister going down -- it's not just
incompetence or negligence. How could FEMA and Homeland Security not have
something so basic as bottled drinking water in the SuperDome, which was long
a part of the hurricane plan? One police officer in charge of his 120-person
unit said yesterday that his squad was provided with only 70 small bottles
of water.

"One of the first acts of Governor Kathleen Blanco
(a Democrat, by the way) during this crisis was to turn off the drinking water,
to force people to evacuate. There was no health reason to turn it off, as
the water is drawn into a separate system from the Mississippi River, not
the polluted lake, and purified through self-powered purification plants separate
from the main electric grid.

"People were told to leave, but all the bus stations
had closed down the night before and the personnel sent packing. Many people
couldn't afford tickets anyway. Many people are stranded (...) They don't
have cars."

-"Let Them Eat Shit..." People
of the Dome, By MITCHEL COHEN

 

"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.

"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."

-Aaron
Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish Louisiana, Transcript for September
4, 2005, Meet the Press, NBC

 

"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."

-Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, The New
York Times, September 2, 2005

 

AUGUST 2004: "As of noon Monday [the day after
the hurricane left], in response to Hurricane Frances, FEMA
and other Federal response agencies have taken the following actions:

-- About one hundred trucks of water and 280 trucks
of ice are present or will arrive in the Jacksonville staging area today.
900,000 Meals-Ready-to-Eat are on site in Jacksonville, ready to be distributed.

-- Over 7,000 cases of food (e.g., vegetables, fruits,
cheese, ham, and turkey) are scheduled to arrive in Winter Haven today.
Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) are on the ground and setting up
comfort stations. FEMA community relations personnel will coordinate with
DMATs to assist victims. -- Urban Search and Rescue Teams are completing
reconnaissance missions in coordination with state officials.

-- FEMA is coordinating with the Department of Energy
and the state to ensure that necessary fuel supplies can be distributed
throughout the state, with a special focus on hospitals and other emergency
facilities that are running on generators.

-- The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin its efforts
to provide tarps to tens of thousands of owners of homes and buildings that
have seen damage to their roofs.

-- The National Guard has called up 4,100 troops in
Florida, as well as thousands in other nearby states to assist in the distribution
of supplies and in preparation for any flooding.

-- The Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans
Affairs, and Defense together have organized 300 medical personnel to be
on standby. Medical personnel will begin deployment to Florida tomorrow.

-- FEMA is coordinating public information messages
with Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina so that evacuees from
Florida can be informed when it is safe to return. -- In addition to federal
personnel already in place to respond to Hurricane Charley, 1,000 additional
community relations personnel are being deployed to Atlanta for training
and further assignment in Florida.

All of this aid was vitally important to Bush family political
fortunes in the upcoming election of 2004. "

-Thom
Hartmann

 

"I was shocked (...) We are ready to provide considerably
more help than they have requested. We are just waiting for a call."

-Chicago's Mayor
Daley

 

"In an interview by WWL TV, Mayor Nagin complained
vociferously that Louisiana National Guard Blackhawk helicopters were being
stopped from dropping sandbags to plug the levee soon after it breached. There
is evidence that no repairs were allowed on the levee until after New Orleans
was totally flooded!

(...) Another telling incident that points to a "nefarious
plan" is what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said at the height of the crisis.
He said publicly, "I fear the CIA may take me out!" Mayor Nagin,
a Black, said this twice. He told a reporter for the Associated Press: "If
the CIA slips me something and next week you don't see me, you'll all know
what happened." Later he told interviewers for CNN on a live broadcast
that he feared the "CIA might take me out." What does Mayor Ray
Nagin know and why does he fear the CIA?"

- The
Great New Orleans Land Grab, The 17th Street Canal levee was breached
on purpose, by Ernesto Cienfuegos

 

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. You
see a black family and they say we are looting, you see a white family and
they say they are looking for food. And, you know, its been five days because
most of the people ARE black..."

-Kanye
West

 

"Citing security concerns, the Department of Homeland
Security barred the American Red Cross from entering New Orleans with food.
Five hundred Floridian airboaters were ready to rescue people stranded in
inundated homes, but FEMA turned them down. "

-Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com

 

"They won't let them walk out of the…convention
center. .. they've locked them in there. The government said, "You go
here, and you'll get help," or, "You go in that Superdome and you'll
get help."

"And they didn't get help. They got locked in there.
And they watched people being killed around them. And they watched people
starving. And they watched elderly people not get any medicine..

"And they've set up a checkpoint. And anyone who walks
up out of that city now is turned around. You are not allowed to go to Gretna,
Louisiana, from New Orleans, Louisiana. Over there, there's hope. Over there,
there's electricity. Over there, there is food and water. But you cannot go
from there to there. The government will not allow you to do it. It's a fact."

-Shepard
Smith, broadcast live on Fox News

 

"Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs
for five days? Don't make me laugh!"

-Michael Moore

 

"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."

-New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley, Guardsmen
'played cards' amid New Orleans chaos: police official

 

"As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded
on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working
around the clock for a week - (1,000 firefighters) learned they are going
to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf
Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number:"

-Frustrated: Fire Crews to Hand Out Fliers for FEMA, The
Salt Lake Tribune

 

"Customs Tells Workers to Stop Helping FEMA

The U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency told
its employees Wednesday to stop volunteering for hurricane relief duty with
the government's primary disaster agency so they can focus on helping New
Orleans police instead."

-TED BRIDIS Associated Press Writer, September 07,2005 | WASHINGTON

 

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and
continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,"
said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard
and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking
for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."

-Homeland
Security won't let Red Cross deliver food, September 03, 2005, Ann Rodgers,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!"

-George W. Bush to FEMA head Michael Brown

 

"...it's only because of the looters that non-looters
-- old people, sick people, small children -- are able to survive."

-New Orleans resident Les
Evenchick

 

"Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows (...)
Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority
to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated
him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
(...) But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift
that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours
after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. (...) Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo
for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance,"
a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. (...) White House
and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some
36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he
didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on
Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike
the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours."

-By Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey, Knight Ridder
Newspapers, Chertoff
delayed federal response, memo shows

 

"The report states that Brigadier General Michael
D Barbero, commander of the Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk,
Louisiana, refused permission for special forces units who volunteered to
join relief efforts, to do so. General Barbero also refused to release other
troops."

-Iraq War Delayed Katrina Relief Effort, Inquiry Finds, By Kim Sengupta, The
Independent UK

 

"Likewise, Cuba is ready to send via Houston, or any
other airport of your choosing, 500 additional specialists in Comprehensive
General Medicine, with the same equipment, who
could be at their destination point at noon or in the afternoon of tomorrow,
Saturday, September 3. Thus, the 1100 said medical doctors, with the resources
described, would be caring for the people in most need of attention in the
aftermath of the hurricane. (...) All we are waiting for is a response from
the U.S. authorities."

-No
Reply, What Cuba Has Offered the People of the Gulf Coast, By FIDEL CASTRO

 

3. Martial Law Exercises on U.S. Soil

"As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed
a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak,
they began firing their weapons over our heads. (...) They responded that
the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes
in their city. These were code words for: if you are poor and Black, you are
not crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not getting out of New Orleans."

-First By the Floods, Then By Martial Law, Trapped in New Orleans, By
LARRY BRADSHAW

and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY

 

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded. These
troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so,
and I expect they will."

-La. Governor Kathleen Blanco

 

"Troops Begin Combat Operations in New Orleans."

-Army Times

 

"This will be a combat operation to get this city
under control.”

-Gen.
Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task
Force

 

"They've given them permission to go down and shoot
us."

-Kanye West

 

"I was shocked to learn that there were only two bodies
that were associated with the Convention Center and the Superdome, and actually
that was one apiece. And then there were only two other bodies associated
with violence in the days immediately after the storm. So, that was a total
of four, and that was clearly inconsistent with the reports that I had seen
on television.

"I learned that later on, but my focus was really
on what the -- some of the major reporters were saying, and I now believe
that they were simply passing on information that they had received from other
sources, but there was no substantiation, no proof, no evidence to support
these claims."

-Orleans
Parish Distrct Attorney Eddie Jordan on Racial Stereotyping, Police Looting
and Private Military Contractors, DemocracyNow!, 10-3-05

 

"Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have
been here days ago. (...) We've been sleeping on the ... ground
like rats, (...) I say burn this whole ... city down."

-New Orleans residnet Michael Levy

 

"FEMA's role has changed from one of public assistance
in a natural catastrophe to defense of the political establishment and its
economic-military power base. New Orleans represents a fundamental transformation
in the way the administration plans to conduct domestic affairs. The democratic
model has been abandoned for a top-down managerial-style with all the familiar
trappings of a dictatorship. The results are plain to see; the city is now
under martial law with armored vehicles and 70,000 military personnel on 24
hour patrol. At present, the last occupants of the poorer areas are being
forcefully-removed from their homes and evacuated while legally-registered
firearms are being confiscated by police."

-Mike Whitney, Katrina;
relocation or ethnic cleansing?

 

4. The Aftermath

"Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has announced that
she is hiring (former FEMA head James Lee) Witt to assist in the hurricane
recovery. Just a minute here. His firm (which includes retired Gen. Wesley
Clark) was part of the IEM team that came up with the non-existent $500,000
FEMA New Orleans-Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan.
Why pay this guy again for his incompetence? Republicans + Democrats = Partners
in Crime."

-FEMA Privatized Hurricane Disaster Recovery Planning for New Orleans and
Southeastern Louisiana, Firms that received the contract are big GOP contributors,
by Wayne
Madsen

 

"Beware America. Beware. (...) Simply throwing money
and power at FEMA, without at the same time addressing the corruption, depravity
and outright evil that has become official Washington is probably more dangerous
than Katrina was and I sure hope we don’t have to find that out."

-Michael
C. Ruppert, GREEKS BEARING GIFTS, Paul Krugman at the New York Times and
Clinton FEMA Director James Lee Witt Leading America Into the Next Slaughter

 

"$51.8 billion boost expected

The request included $1.4 billion for the military and
$400 million for the Army Corps of Engineers, with the
rest to go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

-BENNETT ROTH, Houston
Chronicle Washington Bureau

 

"The final tab could approach the more than $300 billion
spent thus far on U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has already
approved $62 billion for the disaster, but that is expected to run out next
month."

-Bush
says U.S. will pay most of costs to rebuild New Orleans, Gulf Coast, TERENCE
HUNT - Associated Press

 

"Because FEMA was accused of dropping the ball in
Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came
out of the critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for "black
operations" than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building
secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government
disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress
, only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure
by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders
state that FEMA has a "black curtain" around its operations."

-Retrospect on the Role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
FEMA
- The Secret Government, by Harry V. Martin

 

"What we now see emerging clearly is that the Democrats
will make it a major plank in their platform that FEMA’s budget will
be enormously expanded, along with its authority to act independently in a
“crisis.”"

-Michael
C. Ruppert, GREEKS BEARING GIFTS, Paul Krugman at the New York Times and
Clinton FEMA Director James Lee Witt Leading America Into the Next Slaughter

 

"This government organization (FEMA) has more power
than the President of the United States or the Congress, it has the power
to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without
a warrant and hold them without trial, it can seize property, food supplies,
transportation systems, and can suspend the Constitution. (...) FEMA has only
spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their
funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities
to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or
domestic. (...) FEMA's enormous powers can be triggered easily. In any form
of domestic or foreign problem, perceived and not always actual, emergency
powers can be enacted. The President of the United States now has broader
powers to declare martial law, which activates FEMA's extraordinary powers.
Martial law can be declared during time of increased tension overseas, economic
problems within the United States, such as a depression, civil unrest, such
as demonstrations or scenes like the Los Angeles riots, and in a drug crisis.
(...) Three times since 1984, FEMA stood on the threshold of taking control
of the nation. Once under President Reagan in 1984, and twice under President
Bush in 1990 and 1992. But under those three scenarios, there was not a sufficient
crisis to warrant risking martial law. Most experts on the subject of FEMA
and Martial Law insisted that a crisis has to appear dangerous enough for
the people of the United States before they would tolerate or accept complete
government takeover. The typical crisis needed would be threat of imminent
nuclear war, rioting in several U.S. cites simultaneously, a series of national
disasters that affect widespread danger to the populous, massive terrorist
attacks, a depression in which tens of millions are unemployed and without
financial resources, or a major environmental disaster."

-Retrospect on the Role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
FEMA
- The Secret Government, by Harry V. Martin

 

''New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for
a long time, if ever again."

-BushCo. HUD Director Alphonso Jackson, Boston
Globe

 

"Displacement based on race is a form of genocide,
as recognized under the Geneva Conventions. Destruction of a people’s
culture, by official action or depraved inaction, is an offense against humanity,
under international law. New Orleans – the whole city, and its people
– is an indispensable component of African American culture and history.
It is clear that the displaced people of New Orleans are being outsourced
– to everywhere, and nowhere. They are not nowhere people.
They are citizens of the United States, which is obligated to right the wrongs
of the Bush regime, and it’s unnatural disaster. Charity is fine. Rights
are better. The people of New Orleans have the Right to Return – on Uncle
Sam’s tab."

-Glen
Ford, The Black Commentator

 

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans.
We couldn't do it, but God did." -- Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.), Sept.
8, in a quip to lobbyists quoted by the Wall Street Journal. Baker is denying
the quote; the WSJ reporter stands by his story."

- Richard Roeper, Say
that again? 'Things are going relatively well', Chicago Sun Times

 

"Now, another thing that we need to know about, there
are so many things that our government does in our name with our tax dollars,
on our behalf supposedly, that we do not know about. The Bush administration
has opened up these biodefense labs all over the country. In about 20, 25
universities around the country we have got biodefense labs studying I do
not know what.