Reply #39: I've believed that from the beginning and I still do. **HERE ARE THREADS**

[Nothing Without Hope]

from last September and today. The posts throughout the September one fill in a lot of detail and background. They've been setting up this power grab for a long, long time. It's for power, for money, for land, for getting rid of the people they didn't want.

Last September's thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4790112
thread title (9/16/05): Missing A KEY POINT in *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY

Today's thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x377040
thread title (2-10-06 GD): NYT: WH knew early about levee breaks - and BUSH POWER GRAB ALERT!

And as for the signs being there from the very first, check this out:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4523783
thread title (8-31-05): CNN/New Orleans:"Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breeches" and that's {only the beginning}

As time went by and the obvious, deliberate delays and blockages of aid went on and the death toll rose, it got ever more inescapable. Then Bush made his New Orleans speech about how this could all have been avoided if the feds had all the power and the Posse Comitatus rules didn't exist. (That's in the Sept 16 thread above.) With the help of Rove, he tried to blackmail Blanco into giving him control of the Louisiana National Guard and full control of all rescue and relief efforts. It's all spelled out in thousands of released documents:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5518358
thread title (12-4-05): WP:Documents Highlight Bush-Blanco Standoff(Vitter carried Rove's message)

The WH keeps talking about how there needs to be centralization and clarity, but in fact the Bush Administration's own National Response Plan (under the DHS) gives very clear authority in an emergency to the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security under the President:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4668155
thread title (9-6-05): The Buck Stops Here: NATIONAL RESPONSE PLAN

In fact, it was Chertoff's responsibility and he completely blew it. In addition to not acting on urgent messages or apparently even turning on his TV to see what was happening, he delayed issuing a critical triggering declaration which ONLY HE COULD GIVE for days longer than it should have been:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12637172.htm
(There is apparently a GAO report concluding that he erred in this delay too, but I don't have that link.)

The blocks of aid, the continuing deaths from dehydration weeks after the storm, there are endless documented stories and I have bookmarks to hundreds of them myself. I wasn't trying for a comprehensive collection, but they just kept pouring in.

Significantly, the New York Times did a study of a quarter of the RECOGNIZED deaths in New Orleans from Katrina and found that most happened AFTER the storm, not during it:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5632930
thread title (12-19-06): NYT reports study of Katrina dead - MOST DIED AFTER THE STORM
All of these deaths were meaningless and should never have happened. And that is "only" the deaths. The physical and emotional trauma of the survivors, the displacement of people from their homes, from the entire fabric of their lives and communities - all of that is massive beyond comprehension and will continue to unfold for the rest of their lives. It has and will change our entire nation, both for us and in the eyes of the world.

FEMA is currently involved in terminating payments for hotels, and many storm survivors are becoming homeless:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x350683
thread title (2-7-06 GD): Thousands of Katrina evacuees EVICTED from hotels, now homeless
And there are STILL thousands of empty FEMA trailers parked hundreds of miles away from where they could actually be used. That's ANOTHER of the millions of stories in this manifold tragedy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x377263
thread title (2-10-06 GD): LAT: "The Land of 10,770 Empty FEMA Trailers" & Katrina housing EXPLAINED

I also believe that the Bushies WANTED signs of violence, preferably photogenic rioting or looting, that they could add to their carefully crafted picture of a scary scene that required martial law. Documents show that they EXPECTED rioting, there are examples of false, possibly fabricated stories of looting, and the few scenes and stories of looting they had were endlessly looped in TV reports for the rest of the country to see. But the real situation on the ground was very different from this. Again, lots of bookmarked articles and reports.

I could add more and more and more. The evidence taken together is absolutely DAMNING. You're damned right it was LIHOP. In fact, given the deliberate dismembering of support for even maintenance of the essential levees as well as formulation of key evacuation plans for the preceding years despite the inevitability of an eventual major hurricane, it could be said to be in a sense MIHOP. (Bushies don't control the weather, but the predictions were very clear. In their own 2001 report, a major hurricane in New Orleans was given as one of the three most probable US catastrophes - the other two being a terrorist attack on NYC and an earthquake in San Francisco.) Now they're trying to scapegoat little Brownie and grease the skids into a police state while their cronies loot what's left of New Orleans and everyone (they hope) simply forgets about Alabama, Mississippi and the other affected areas.

FEMA was a functioning agency under Clinton. It was gutted, starved, depopulated of experts and competent, caring people, and given to a doofus to run under impossible conditions. (And yes, I have bookmarks on that part too.) It was SUPPOSED to fail. And it did.