A Medieval Siege. This whole thing has been about FEMA control...

[Junkdrawer]

Why did they try to strong arm Gov. Blanco into total Federal Control.

Why did they keep all outside aid out?

Whey did they cut local communications?

Why won’t they let reporters into the Superdome and/or Convention Center?

Why no interim body counts?

Why turn New Orleans into a living hellhole people would beg to leave?

Why did they say 7,000 at the Superdome before the evacuation and 25,000 after the evacuation? Same at the Convention Center.

How can you possibly process 25,000 people in one day and then move them via helicopter with a single triage line?

Where are the thousands of buses it would take to evacuate 50,000 people?

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour are good little monkeys. They allow FEMA to control the news and so they’ll get good press and small body counts. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin wanted FEMA to work with them, they didn’t want FEMA to take over.

The whole damn thing has been about allowing FEMA to protect political asses.

[Junkdrawer]

1. .

[Bernardo de La Paz]

26. The Siege of New Orleans 2005

Frame the debate with the truth: FEMA blocked aid from reaching New Orleans and then the Bush regime sent lawyers to try to take control away from the state of Louisiana.

[Junkdrawer]

29. I think that's the big picture...

The Siege of New Orleans 2005 - good meme :thumbsup:

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. After 9-11 FEMA was Militarized

What we are seeing now is a Military operation, not a rescue operation.

[spooked911]

44. sure seems that way

[RBHam]

3. No. THIS is about HOMELAND SECURITY...

and the DESTRUCTION of what FEMA used to be. Now privatized out to phantom beneficiaries - and run by a republican lawyer who was an arabian horse breeding wannabe...

lordy lordy

it all sets up like we said.

The SS and the Gestapo have been re-born in the United States of America.

[katmondoo]

5. Just what I was thinking! Fema is the SS of America

[Junkdrawer]

6. FEMA, HS either way, BushCo control. All or nothing.

And if you don't give them total control, they set up a perimeter and starve you out.

It was a Siege. Medieval.

[Joanne98]

7. That's what I think.

[madeline_con]

23. reborn? DUH-bya's descended from Nazi business partners.

I'm not surprised they're using such tactics.

[Pharlo]

33. Say what you want about the Bushies and FEMA,

but PLEASE, keep in mind the SS and Gestapo were competent.

Repugnant, but competent.

In the three days this administration spent trying to figure out what a hurricane is and how it could affect the people there, the SS and Gestapo could have removed all the inhabitants of NO to extermination camps.

Something else, the SS and Gestapo would have done their best to see to it that the national fuel supply was not compromised.

So, please give the SS and Gestapo credit for competence - regardless of how heinous the results of that competence.

[area51]

42. H.S.

A more accurate name for the organization would be Fatherland Security.

[DoYouEverWonder]

45. But we won a major battle this weekend

When Gov Blanco refused to sign over control of Louisiana to the Feds. Then she hired Witt, and Honore arrived and put the National Guard in charge. He basically pushed Chernoff out of the way and the guy didn't know what hit him.

We are at a big turning point right now, but I think BushCo just go their first big slap down. They tried to pull another 9-11 but too many of us are paying attention this time.

[Old and In the Way]

4. Why 5+ days to fix the levee?????

We are talking 600 feet of breach. That should have been a parallel priority #1. I can't believe it would take more than 24 hours to close...if they wanted to.

[Junkdrawer]

11. You know, of course, that Mayor Nagin arranged early Tuesday...

to have the levee repaired and FEMA pulled the helicopters off the job.

[Emit]

13. Can you point me in the direction of an article or link to that info? TX!

[Junkdrawer]

15. I'm late picking up my kid. Later. Perhaps someone here can...

point you in the right direction - he said it Wednesday, I believe.

[Junkdrawer]

22. Here:

According to the mayor, the plan was to start dropping 3,000-pound sandbags into the hole by midday Tuesday. Yet by nightfall Tuesday, the water began to slowly but ominously creep into the streets of the French Quarter, also creating a 4-foot moat around the Louisiana Superdome, home to 25,000 refugees. ...

"A bewildered Mayor Nagin told us that he was furious when he found out that the Black Hawk helicopter that was supposed to drop the 3,000-pound sandbags to plug up the hole in the levee had been redirected by someone to go to a rescue mission at a local church.

"According to the mayor, 'There are too many cooks in the kitchen.' As for which of the chiefs ordered the helicopter off the sandbagging operation? The mayor says he's still looking for the answer."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3335855

[NYC]

30. I heard Nagin on the radio or television.

For me, it is only audio, so I can't say it was television. I was listening at WDSU. He was trying desperately to reach the White House to find out why the helicopter had not appeared.

It was supposed to happen around lunchtime. By 6:15 p.m., the #6 pump failed because it was under water. Nagin still could not reach the White House.

I would suggest going to WWLTV.com or WDSU.com, and looking around there.

[Junkdrawer]

32. Yep. BTW: On 60 minutes, Nagin said the big battle is to come...

When they drain the city and the bodies show up. Nagin is a very smart man - he knows that's when FEMA/Homeland Security do their "hide the bodies" thing...

So he framed it: 100,000 left in the city 35,000 (generous if you ask me) evacuated, 15,000 still to be saved. That leaves 50,000 missing. Then he said "pick a number, 10%, 15%, 20% dead"...That translates to 5,000, 7,500 and 10,000 in New Orleans alone.

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. If they wanted too, is the key concept

They fixed the pipelines and reopened shipping within 2 days.

This whole thing has been another major FLOP = Failure to Lead on Purpose.

[Junkdrawer]

34. Here's what's REALLY TROUBLING:

The 17th St. Levee took out the pumping station that pumped water out of the city and the pumps that gave people domestic water. Now we are find whole families that died in their homes of thirst.

[ocean girl]

8. I agree, J.D.

It's about total control.

[Junkdrawer]

9. They're willing to do ANYTHING for total control.

:mad:

[unhappycamper]

10. It's genocide.

Pure and simple.

GOP = Genocide On Poor People

[Emit]

12. Did they turn this into their 2nd 'New Pearl Harbor'

Was the delay and resulting chaos deliberate, so that the masses will now relinquish even more control to these sinister Machiavellian totalitarians?

Witnessing the ineptitude in what has and continues to happen here is really mind-boggling.

I fear we are truly becoming a dystopia.

[Junkdrawer]

14. I wouldn't go that far yet...

They haven't blamed this one on terrorists...yet.

[Emit]

17. But, see, they don't have to.

They might be using this to their advantage--sinister as hell, unhealthy to imagine and hard to fathom, but....

Now Bush & Co. can say it's not just terrorism that we have to fear: it's natural disasters, looters, etc. So, will they now be putting forth more controls, taking more freedoms, etc. to protect us from 'ourselves' and natural disasters?

I know I might be a bit far out there on this, but what better way to have the masses begging the government for more help and more protection than by allowing this to have gotten out of control, making it appear that the Dem-controlled state government couldn't handle things (which they couldn't -- but they asked for assistance and it was a farce, red-taped mess) and then bringing in the 'cavalry' to "save" the day?

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. Oh yes all those scary looters are coming to get us.

Osama doesn't work anymore, so they need a new boggie man.

Now they have to protect us from those marauding bands of looters. That's the ticket.

[NYC]

31. I agree with you.

I just hope people see that it was the FEDERAL government that worsened this disaster. Already, FEMA had been transferred to Homeland Security. It is obvious that Homeland Security is incapable of protecting and/or helping U.S. citizens.

It will be the 2nd Pearl Harbor that they will use as an excuse to seek more control, but in reality, it should show everyone that they should have LESS control.

[madeline_con]

24. But of course it's terra-ists fault, don't you see?

If we didn't "have to fight them over there", we'd have the equipment here.
:eyes:

[DoYouEverWonder]

28. Looters are the new terrorists

Osama wasn't scaring anyone anymore, so they needed a new Boogy man. How appropiate that the new one would come from the home of boogy woogie.

[HereSince1628]

16. Personally I think they were protecting no-bid contracts from Halliburton

[dogindia]

20. all the thinking on this post seems right.

[dogindia]

21. plus the control the voting so other powers can get in.

[RBHam]

25. The most cogent thread yet...

CONTROL.

When's the revolution?

[Junkdrawer]

27. Thanks - just trying to explain all the incredible facts with the...

least malevolent motives possible. This is the best I could do - and it's plenty awful.

[Junkdrawer]

35. .

[Junkdrawer]

38. .

[Junkdrawer]

39. .

[Land Shark]

36. reaching for Security is the fundamental RW political playing card

it is what unites the defense lobby interests with the fundamentalists (religion being a search for personal security about one's fate in an uncertain world).

from the above standpoint, there is a resonance. Regardless of whether planned or not, EVEN MOST LIBERALS will be screaming for more government based on the obvious distress of the people down there.

One doesn't need to decide whether anyone intentionally delayed relief efforts in order to see that one major result is strengthening centralized federal control and allowing the military to be used against US citizens without express congressional approval (something that could likely be easily achieved if restricted in time and place to the Gulf coast)

[EastofEdon]

37. did I just hear Gov. Blanco is not caving on this?

(CNN playing in the background here)

[DoYouEverWonder]

46. Yep she sure is.

She's not letting Bush & Co steal her state.

[KayLaw]

40. Here's a link

I did a Google groups search using: Patriot Act herd stadiums and found this, oddly on a Rush Limbaugh groups page:

patriot act stadiums herd

If it doesn't work, you may want to try your own search because it details the Federal governments desire to take over in certain situations, the whole stadium thing, seizing private property, blocking roads, military takeover, etc. Not tinfoil hat stuff, just facts.

[Junkdrawer]

43. That brings up a great point: FEMA post 9/11 is designed to contain...

terror attacks. So we get a natural disaster and these ghouls go into post biological attack mode.

[DoYouEverWonder]

47. They ran a military operation

not a rescue response. They forgot they weren't in Iraq.

[Junkdrawer]

48. They ran a "Only my operatives are allowed here" operation...

FEMA is first and utmost a "Reality Control" operation. But they never before tried to practice "Reality Control" on an entire city - an entire city still in the middle of an ongoing disaster.

They failed on all counts. Miserably.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

41. Contain and control, not rescue and aid

You're 100% on the money. No water, no volunteers, no equipment, unless it was controlled by FEMA. Is it too much to say that they seem to have turned this into a military operation AGAINST their own citizens? There's almost no other way to describe it. In the harrowing Geraldo tape -he says - "they could WALK out of here over the bridge to Gretna - where there is life and food and water, but they won't let them. (this is a paraphrase)Why all the weird emphasis on security and demonizing the people trapped in the city?

Does it seem like dress rehearsal for martial law? This is another reason why Brown and Chertoff will never be fired. Their only major job requirement is loyalty to Bush - not how well they administer aid.