World stunned as US struggles with Katrina

No rapes in Sri Lanka? Pakistan? Indonesia? Mecca? Medina?

Surely, you know what the Imams are doing to children on their off-season.

Yes. The fuckin bastards looting unecessaily in New Orleans is despicable. But some will tell us we have to be tolerant and understand blah blah. Bullshit. Noboyd needs to fuckin loot and shoot at rescue aid ever and there isn't a fuckin excuse for it. The thing is though America is a big country. I can assure you that that kind of looting would never happen here where I live in Palm Beach county.

Interesting point, if elliptically -- we don't want to be judged, as a nation, by what some people are doing in New Orleans, right?

sozobe, that's exactly what the foreign press is showing
and writing about, not only in England - all over Europe
you'll find similar articles.

I have been embarrassed for five days--by the federal government, the government of LA, and the officials of New Orleans. I'm also angry at the looters, the hijackers and the damn fools who leave dirty disposable diapers spread all over the sidewalk.

American citizenship should be a matter of pride--but right not it isn't.

I have to wonder at the ignorance or just plain stupidity of some of you people.
Some of you are complaining that the NG cant help because they are all in Iraq.
Do any of you even bother to do a little research at all?
According to this site...
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/arng-la.htm

there are 11,500 members of the La National Guard.

According to this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090101661.html

There are 3700 members of the La NG in Iraq.
That leaves almost 8000 members of the LA NG available to respond to the hurricane.
Now,since the NG answers to and takes orders from the governor of the state,why didn't the gov of La mobilize them before the storm?

Where are they?
Why didn't the Gov call them up and have them act?
Those 8000 people could have helped immensely,they could have been way ahead on evacuations,they could have secured the city and restored order.

The mayor of NO has been crying and blaming Bush,but he bears some of the responsibility.
In any disaster,the order of response is local,state,then federal.
Why didn't the mayor commandeer the city buses and the school buses to help get people out?
Why didn't the gov order the La NG to start evacuating people?

All of us know that the federal govt takes a few days to respond to anything,but when they do its with overwhelming resources.
We are seeing that now,with troops moving in with convoys of supplies,and with the firepower to restore order and maintain it.

So,I ask again...What happened to those 8000 members of the La NG that aren't in Iraq?
Whose fault is it that they weren't mobilized before the storm?

What the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, believes.

[Repubs, don't listen. Your child-like brains will not be able to handle these blunt truths.]


http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3

JTT, This is a very good interveiw.You should put it on all relating threads.

Amigo suggested:



JTT--

Please don't enter this excellent interview over and over and over again. There are at least a dozen threads on the aftermath of Katrina and it is difficult enough to keep them sorted out without have the same post pop up again and again and again.

That sort of repetition doesn't make a poster popular.

I like the mayor's attitude on this.

I've honestly heard it so many times it now grates on me - of course I'm on day 2 of a migraine

Is this what we can expect from our government as a response to a major terrorist attack. Homeland security?????

 Editorial NY Times


The situation in New Orleans, which had seemed as bad as it could get, became considerably worse on Thursday with reports of what seemed like a total breakdown of organized society. 
Americans who had been humbled by failures in Iraq saw that the authorities could not seem to cope immediately with a natural disaster at home. People died for lack of water, medical care or timely rescues - particularly the old and the young - and victims were almost invariably poor and black. The city's police chief spoke of rapes, beatings and marauding mobs. The pictures were equally heartbreaking and maddening. Disaster planners were well aware that New Orleans could be flooded by the combined effects of a hurricane and broken levees, yet somehow the government was unable to immediately rise to the occasion. 
Watching helplessly from afar, many citizens wondered whether rescue operations were hampered because almost one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were fighting in Iraq. 
That's an even bigger loss than the raw numbers suggest because many of these part-time soldiers had to leave behind their full-time jobs in police and fire departments or their jobs as paramedics. Regardless of whether they wear public safety uniforms in civilian life, the guardsmen in Iraq are a crucial resource sorely missed during these early days, when hours have literally meant the difference between evacuation and inundation, between civic order and chaos, between life and death. 
The gap is now belatedly being filled by units from other states, though without the local knowledge and training those Mississippi and Louisiana units can supply. The Pentagon is sending thousands of active-duty sailors and soldiers, including a fully staffed aircraft carrier, a hospital ship and some 3,000 army troops for security and crowd control (even though federal law bars regular army forces from domestic law enforcement, normally the province of the National Guard). 
But it's already a very costly game of catch-up. The situation might have been considerably less dire if all of Louisiana's and Mississippi's National Guard had been mobilized before the storm so they could organize, enforce and aid in the evacuation of vulnerable areas. Plans should have been drawn up for doing so, with sufficient forces available to carry them out. 
It's too late for that now. But the hard lessons of this week must be learned and incorporated into America's plans for future emergencies, whether these come in the form of natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Every state must now update its plans for quick emergency responses and must be assured by the Pentagon that it will be able to keep enough National Guard soldiers on hand to carry out these plans on very short notice. 
 
One lasting lesson that has to be drawn from the Gulf Coast's misery is that from now on, the National Guard must be treated as America's most essential homeland security force, not as some kind of military piggy bank for the Pentagon to raid for long-term overseas missions. America clearly needs a larger active-duty army. It just as clearly needs a National Guard that's fully prepared and ready for any domestic emergency. 

Duh, I couldnt figger out how to hit that webscrawl could you maybe you know give me instructshee-owns? I arnt to brite on theze thangs.

I had read about the mayors comments, but not heard them. Thank you for posting the link. Very powerful, and a transcript doesn't do it justice.


Good editorial, too, au.

So I've noticed, Sturgis.

I suppose I sort of asked for that one, eh?

Very powerful & extremely distressing. Thank you for posting it, JTT.
Unbelievable that this could actually be happening in the USA in 2005.

Do you think it could happen in Oz?