In a post that cries out for intervention by Obviousman, I gotta say...

[harlinchi]

...that the lack of real reporting regarding the numbers of deaths due to Katrina is distressing. When will numbers be reported? The event happened five months ago and so-called reputable news sources are still reporting the 1,300 plus number. This is patently ridiculous.

I disagree with the hidden numbers of deaths, in both the Persian and the American Gulf regions. At least in Iraq, the president gives himself an extremely thin veneer of rationale, saying he hides the returning coffins out of respect for the deceased. Bush says that to do otherwise would give aid and comfort to our enemies. I disagree, but the patina of a reason exists. This has an equivalent effect, though, of being 'penny wise and pound foolish' in that he concerns himself with the small insults like the viewing of returning coffins, and ignores the larger ones, like the death itself. The media abets his actions by burying bad news.

Katrina occurred, however, in America. There are no enemies to receive aid and comfort from any information published. The only ones receiving such aid and comfort from not publishing the numbers of deaths that occurred as a result of the hurricane are the members of the administration who were charged with responding to it, and the president himself. We all shall see whether he ultimately will be considered an enemy of the United States of America.


Obviousman is an occasionally recurring character in the Philly Inquirer's comics section. He is a fat, balding white guy with glasses in a superhero uniform. On his chest is a circle containing the word 'Duh!' with a diagonal bar slashing through it as if to say 'no' (as in No Duh!).



http://www.angelfire.com/goth/andysgirl/obm.html

[hlthe2b]

1. I'm appalled too...

Cable "news" as turned the entire country into a population of "attention- deficits" and 15 second soundbyte addicts. I want the news professionals of my youth back.....(even if it meant seeing the horrors of Vietnam splashed across one's tv on a nigtly basis). At least they did actual reporting...


Is our country already lost? :cry:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. I so agree with you about the no accountability for the number of Katrina

There was no search, there was no rescue and there is no recovery. I think there is a concerted effort underway to never have any meaningful statistics about Katrina deaths as I believe they would be much higher than 9/11. Some of the deaths were the unavoidable consequences of a natural disaster. Many were the result of bureaucratic apathy, bungling and negligence. And yes, we KNOW that there were fallibilities at all levels, but the greatest failure was at the federal level. No search, no rescue, no recovery.

[blm]

3. You think BushInc cronies bought control of most broadcast media all these

years to give the public real news?

House of Saud and House of Bush and their cronies control most broadcast media. They catapult the propoganda at will. They ignore important stories at will. They destroy their political enemies at will.

Freepers must know this by now, that is why I consider them TRAITORS to this country.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

4. I would hope a Democrat

would suggest a special investigative committee to come up with a final number. It is an important number.

[harlinchi]

5. The Times reported on the stonewalling as well.

Neither The Times nor CNN, in their reporting of the damage which occurred, mention any number close to the actual death total. CNN mentions hundreds of deaths while the Times focuses on the dollar amounts of damages, probably under-reporting even that.

From CNN:

"Any storm rated Category 4 or greater on the Saffir-Simpson scale will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching, leaving the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months," a Department of Homeland Security report warned August 28, the day before Katrina came ashore at the Louisiana-Mississippi state line.

The documents were released as the Senate committee prepares for a hearing on the response to Katrina, which killed hundreds in the two states and left about 80 percent of New Orleans under water when portions of three levees failed. The breach of the levees was predicted by a 2004 emergency management simulation called the "Hurricane Pam exercise."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/24/katrina.levees/index.h...


from The Times:

The Congressional investigations began in September, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, flooding New Orleans, devastating much of the rest of the region and causing more than $100 billion in damage.

http://nytimes.com/2006/01/25/politics/25katrina.html?p...

How any reporting medium can continue to think of itself as reputable and relevant when, as it reports on Katrina, no real mention is made of the numbers of deaths which occurred is way beyond me. Worse, there appears to be no inclination to find those numbers. The media is giving aid and comfort to an entire administration which ultimately, by history, might yet be considered to have been an enemy of The United States of America.

Also, the Times makes use of what I think is a frequently used tactic of this administration by reporting the actual number of documents released to the investigation, as if the sheer volume of documents provide evidence of 'unprecedented' (another misdirecting phrase commonly used by the administration) cooperation:


The Department of Defense, for example, has provided 18 officials for testimony, and 57 others have been interviewed by Congressional staff members, said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman. It has also turned over an estimated 240,000 pages of documents.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said his agency, which oversees FEMA, had been similarly responsive, providing 60 officials as witnesses and producing 300,000 pages of documents.


Obviousman (from Wiley) has intervened and informed us that having provided 1 million documents is insignificant if the 1,000,001st has the crucial information and was not provided.

[Totally Committed]

6. I actually think all the relocations were to hide that number,

or forever make it impossible to come up with a number. Those poor people were brought outside their state and dumped in places with no way to get backto NO, no real mechanisms to hook them up with family or friends or pets, and even in some cases their own children. I can only believe that an administration that wouldn't walk across the street to save even one of them, that actually finding busses that DID work to get them that far out of town was intentional, and those intemtions were well thought-out and for one reason only: to avoid accountability.

TC

[donkeyotay]

7. Who would have thought that in the middle of a catastrophe

they would just stop recovering the dead because it was an embarrassment to Washington? Just left Americans to rot like garbage. And Republicans still think they stand for something good.